


Operation Zeitgeist

by distantdaylight



Category: The Man in the High Castle (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fascism, Ideology, John loves his family, Juliana grows up as Resistance, Nazism, actual Weimar culture references, becuase i am a nerd, explicit content, i have a crush on a nazi kind of tension, just NOT that much, lots of tension, spies and agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 08:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9227576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distantdaylight/pseuds/distantdaylight
Summary: Juliana Crain was raised by the Resistance with one aim only—to infiltrate the structures of GNR and kill its leader.But when the time comes, she hesitates.





	1. Before

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sure I will finish this. God, I am not even sure I should be writing this at all, but it has been in my head for some time and putting it on paper seems to be the only way how to get it out of there. 
> 
> (Your comments will be highly appreciated and if someone would like to beta this, I would be infinitely grateful.) 
> 
> This Prologue is from John's perspective. All subsequent chapters will be from Juliana's POV.

 

_“Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space."_

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

 

* * *

 

 

There is something about her that astounds him from the start. 

  
He does not notice her at once, of course. Not when he comes in and not when he sits down. It is only after the lengthy standing ovation, after everyone else leaves that his eyes find her—a slim figure in a neatly pressed black uniform, decorated by a striped armband. It is, perhaps, the rarity that intrigues him or maybe it is his intuition, a herald to what is to come. Women were not officially allowed to join the ranks of the _Schutzstaffel_ , but for those who desired to do so, there were always ways—options one could take. In the Greater Nazi Reich, it could be done through the _Schutzstaffel_ itself. In the Third Reich women needed to join a related institution focusing specifically on female engagement in the war effort. The most famous of them, Heinrich Himmler’s lover and current wife, Hedwig Potthast was of the first generation in the context of the Reich. The brunette in front of him will be one of the first generation raised by Greater Reich. 

Ideologically, no woman was seen as suitable for such position. Nevertheless, when being in possession of the right credentials and fueled by a pure motivation, even _this_ regime was willing to make exceptions and accept the fairer sex as something else than mothers of the _Volk_ ’s future.  

Waiting for the last men to exit the room, he watches her with curiosity. He could have left by now, normally he would have, but he is in no hurry and he cannot help but be intrigued. Not by her personally, but the idea of her—of what the beginning of such equality might mean in the face of the law. There was an equality like this in the U.S. Army, he remembers, or at least the beginning of one. But that state has fallen and its values and ideals have fallen with it.

He watches her as she rises to her feet and gracefully exists her row only to come to something he would describe as a sudden halt. Glancing at the still projected picture on the screen, her posture seems to relax. Her eyes see what he does—one of the most stunning pieces of Albert Speer’s architectonic magic. The Zeppelinfield set alight by hundreds of light beams creating the so-called Cathedral of Light.

“It has no _Zeitgeist_ ,” he hears her whisper to herself, absently. It is the acoustics of the room that betray her, not him. A bold statement; criticism is not something the regime tolerates, but they are alone, the room is not plugged and he does not care for one girl’s opinions on architecture. Besides looking at the rectangular structure on the screen, he cannot but agree with her. He has always found the classical splendor of Speer’s work rather beautiful, but he cannot deny the absence of present in its curt shapes.

“Interesting observation,” he states, knowing all too well he has to make his presence known to her. Rising from his seat, he sees her turn rapidly, her azure eyes wide in shock.

“I thought I was alone,” she breathes; the words steady but somehow hesitant. He has managed to unsettle her. He smiles then, watching her watching him. Her intelligent face is relaxed, fixed with an easy and attractive smile, but beneath the mask, he sees her thinking. 'If you want to know the truth, you have to look into their eyes,' Reinhard Heydrich once told him and he was right. _It is the eyes that betray you_. She is not a prisoner though and he is not here to ask her about her treacherous or inappropriate thoughts, far from it. He is fascinated. Now, not only by her persona as a social oddity, but also by her somewhat ill fitted comment.

Ascending a couple of stairs he comes to stand beside her. The gesture is well meant—kitchen psychology. If you want them to feel at ease, do not hover about them.

“I never thought about Speer’s work in such a way,” he tells her and tilts his head as his eyes scan the black and white projection in front of them. “He is undoubtedly the most accomplished architect of our times and yet, the space he creates does not seem to posses a soul.”

The young woman beside him turns to face him. Her blue eyes regain their clarity and suddenly, he feels observed and measured. The power in the room has surprisingly shifted.

“There is no soul in eternity,” she says, her face lit by the soft electronic light generated by the projector. “It transcends it.”

Pursing his lips, he nods. Spoken like a true _Gefolge_ —perhaps there was another reason for her confusion than her slip; perhaps it was simply his presence that has panicked her. Slowly he moves towards the exit of the now dark lecture hall. Few minutes ago, the place was still lit by bright white lights and swarming with people. All and every one of them pleased to have witnessed a lecture by Albert Speer himself. He, for one, has escorted the man from the Party Headquarters to the New York University and was pleasantly surprise at the man’s natural ease.

He hears her fall in step behind him; the sharp sound of her heels echoing in the empty space.  

“Are you a student?” he asks then with genuine interest, knowing all too well the lecture was primarily meant for students of architecture, but she surprises him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shake her head.

“No, Sir. I am only someone who has always been fascinated by urban spaces and other human-made environments.”

They walk though the two-wing door and he stops. He thinks about her answer briefly, but decides to leave their topical conversation at that. There is nothing wrong in being interested in space, after all—as unorthodox as it might seem for woman of her upbringing. Their paths will part now, he knows as much and he is not regretful they do. There is something about her that does not add up, something odd. He is attracted to her, he is aware of that, but that is not what makes him uneasy. There is something else; something in the way she looks at him—as if she knew. Knew what? He could not say.

“John Smith,” he tells her then, extending his hand to her. He leaves his rank unsaid, knowing she must know how to read the insignia.

Taking his hand, she gives it a brief, light squeeze.

“Juliana Crain.”

“It was a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” she echoes as the custom dictates and raises her right arm in the traditional salute.

“Heil Hitler.”

“Heil Hitler,” he nods, and briefly mirroring her gesture, he turns away and walks down the sterile corridor; away from her scrutinizing gaze.


	2. The Task

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was thinking about having long chapters, but perhaps having shorter chapters will be better, after all. We are switching POV as promised.
> 
> If anyone would like to help me out with some beta work, that would be great.

_"The future influences the present just as much as the past."_

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

* * *

 

She sits in the Nazi Party Transatlantic Headquarters, on the thirty-fourth floor. Waiting.

“Miss Crain?”

A nod.

“Follow me.”

Rising from the chair she obeys. She knew this day would come, she knew it ever since she was fourteen—ever since they told her what she is meant to do. There was a time when she thought she would walk in and never walk out. There was a time when she believed she would die and she will, but not today.

She does not believe in fate. She does not want to. But their meeting in that empty lecture hall was fate and she has learned to accept it. It did not have to be this way. He did not have to be the man she would kill—there were others waiting for the position, others who were his senior in age and rank, but not capabilities. The moment she saw him, back in that sterile hall, among rows and rows of old amber chairs, she knew it would be him. The GNR does not care for seniority; it cares for competence and charisma. The man she met five years ago had both. He was magnetizing, in all senses of the word

She is announced; walks in. He greets her without raising his head from the manila folder he reads.

She will not shoot him today. That is not her task. She will accept whatever mission he gives her and over time she will befriend him, entice him and get all the information those behind the scenes might need and one day, when the Führer dies and the Reich tumbles into chaos, she will catch him unaware and put a bullet in his brain. Those are her orders—orders she has no choice but to follow.

Her form sinks into the leather armchair. Her eyes scan the room. The robust furniture, the dark colors, every object she sees respires the impersonal nature of superior masculinity, every object but the picture frame place on top of his desk. She wonders what picture is there on display. Does it show his wife—Helen Smith? His children? Is the man she was destined to kill truly loved? Is he a good husband, a good father? She does not know. What she has is data; mere words on a page. 

He closes the manila folder, looks up. His hazel eyes meet hers and she feels herself freeze. Until now, she has been fighting an idea. It is time to start fighting the man.

 _I am good at this_ , she reminds herself then, just as she reminded herself five years ago and she _is_ good at this—whatever _this_ might be. Lying, pretending, acting? She does not know what to call it. What she does know is that she has lived dozens of lives and none of them were hers. What she does know is that she can be whatever this man wants and believes her to be, because in the end she is no one. What she _is_ ; is a weapon, and luckily for the man in front of her, no one has pulled the trigger yet.

“How was your stay in San Francisco?”

“Warm,” she says. “Informative.”

There is no need to explain why she was there or how she made herself useful—not to him, anyway. He has read her file. He knows what she did and when. He knows where she lived. Most likely, he knows even about Frank. The man she had fallen in love with and the man whose heart she broke.

Tilting his head he gives her an approving nod. “You were a great asset to us, Miss Crain. Excellent work.”

“Thank you, Sir,” she says, feeling a trace of satisfaction. Dropping her eyes she avoids his gaze. It is an act, she tells herself, but the truth is not only an assassin and spy, she is also a citizen of this state and she has helped this state, no matter how treacherous it might be. Doesn’t she deserve a pat on the shoulder? Shouldn’t she feel good to hear that what she did was a job well done, even if her actions were criminal?

“It came to my attention that you learned Japanese at a very young age. How come?”

 _You know how come_ , she thinks, but says nothing of the sort. “I had a Japanese caretaker, when I was little—she struggled with English and German so she spoke to me in her mother tongue.”

She sees the man narrow his eyes.

“That was rather unorthodox, wasn’t it?”

Juliana smiles a smile that she knows does not reach her eyes. She has discussed this before. Many times. Her entry to the _Schutzstaffel_ was almost marred by this. 'She speaks Japanese,' they said. 'She has respect for their culture, surely she will grow up to be their spy.' She didn’t. In the end she grew up spying _on_ them, rather than _for_ them—exactly as her uncle had wanted her to.

“My step-father's intentions were practical. If he did not learn English he would have never become a successful businessman and architect here in the GNR. He was very insistent I learn both German _and_ Japanese, so I could better understand the world I live in. He believed cultural understanding to be the key in serving one’s own community.”

“You were an only child.”

“Yes,” she says. She was adopted, but he knows _that_ as well. “You think my step-father wanted a boy and got a girl instead, is that it?”

He tilts his head, his expression alters; grows stiffer and for a brief moment she thinks she might have stepped too far. This might have worked five years ago—this game of push and pull, where she says something daring and he lets it go, because he is a self-serving bastard rather than a brainwashed maniac. She has followed him; she knows him perhaps just as well as he knows her. They both read each other files, of sorts. It’s a risk. One that might pay off or cost her head but it’s a risk worth taking.

This time, she wins.

“Admittedly, I am puzzled why would anyone want endanger their only daughter when there was no need for it.”

A true family man; she knew as much.

“They did not want to endanger me,” she says, raising her chin. “They wanted me to be free.”

It is not a lie, but it is not the truth either. Her step-father had no say in her future and neither did her step-mother. The Third Reich has overpowered the United States. The first years of the GNR were chaotic. They wanted a child, badly. They couldn’t have one. There were so many children who where lost and orphaned. So many children, who were deemed worthy of the New World Order, but had no one to raise them. They could have chosen any child—any _normal_ child and live their lives in ignorance. They hadn’t. They struck a deal with the Resistance. They would raise a child, but not any child—a niece of the Resistance leader and she will put a stop to all this.

They loved her and wanted her to be free, but not from the ideologically imposed gender boundaries that she implied, but from the ideology itself.

There is a moment of silence then. She watches him watch her, his gaze too intense for her liking. With his pale skin, high cheekbones, and raven hair, he looks like one of the Greek gods—none of whom were known for mercy. She wishes she could read him as she can others. She wishes he would just be a mindless brute, but he isn’t and she cannot help but respect intelligence. Clenching her jaw she waits—waits for what sentence he may pass. He leans forward in his armchair. The movement is sudden, but she does not flinch.

“Your parents made the right decision,” he says, his tone marked with something bordering admiration.

She feels herself exhale.

He hands her the manila folder in his hands

“Your new mission,” he informs her.

She opens it without hesitation. It is a personal file; a file dedicated to a man named Joe Blake. She scans it briefly. The man is three years her senior, was raised by his mother in downtown New York. He did admirable in his army service and now works as a construction worker. She looks up.

“Where is the rest?” she asks bluntly; her face expression puzzled.

John Smith smirks.

“You do not have the clearance for _the_ _rest_.”

She tilts her head, but waits.

There will be more.

There is more.

“Half a year ago, Joe Blake had been sent on a undercover mission to the Neutral Zone. He was meant to contact the Resistance and retrieve a film created by the so-called Man in the High Castle. These films are of great interest to the Reich in general and our Führer in particular. While his mission seemed to have proceeded successfully, according to his account, the Resistance has managed to sniff out his bluff and his contact has disappeared along with the movie. I have certain reasons to believe that Mr. Blake is still in possession of the film. I would like you to retrieve it from him, or even better, convince him to give it to me himself.”

There is much, much more to this story, she knows. If this was all there was, Joe Blake would be in a cell or long dead.

“How important is Joe Blake?”

“Very.”

It is an honest answer and she knows better than to think she will get a better one.

“You are afraid he is flirting with the Resistance and you want him to come back to the right side, is that correct?”

A nod.

“Why me?”

“Mr. Blake does not respond well to authority.”

“You want me to seduce him.” She thinks she should be appalled, disgusted. She is neither. Something like this was to be expected, after all.

Smith looks at her, his face unchanged, “I want you to make sure Joe doesn’t do anything stupid.” There is something familial about the way he says it. As if he knew the man she is supposed to trick, as if he cared.

She gives him a measured look—she would like to know the whole story. Who is this man? Why does he matter? But this is not the time to ask further questions.

“You don’t need to worry, Sir. Mr. Blake will find himself on the right track soon enough.”

“Good,” the man in front of her smiles with satisfaction. “I would like to receive weekly updates. My secretary will give you the respective numbers. Do not hesitate to call me with any information you deem worth sharing.”

“I shall do that, Sir.”

Another nod, then silence.

She stands up, ready to leave; she know she should say something—to establish contact. She came here with a purpose, after all.

“Did you remember me? Or did you just get a file on your desk.”

“I _asked_ for you, Juliana,” he says and dismisses her.


	3. The Film

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juliana tries to figure out what her current mission is about while trying to get closer to John. It works—to certain extent at least. I hope the characters are not too much out of character. On the other hand, this Juliana grew up under very different conditions in this universe and John, well, I see him more of an opportunist than anything. 
> 
> I have also started to read A Short History of Decay by Emil Cioran and hence you can clearly see the influence here. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your feedback so far!

_“In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy [...] whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games."_

Emil Cioran

 

* * *

 

 

She goes home to read over the file, again and again. In the morning she gets into her car and parks in front of his house. He leaves at 6:45. Stops at a near by diner to order a coffee and skim the newspaper. At 7:15 he enters a bus and drives to the construction he is employed at. He works until 12:30. Then he eats his lunch—a homemade sandwich as far as she can tell. At 17:30 his work is over. He enters the bus and takes it home.

The following day, he does the same.

Sometimes he stops by a supermarket and buys couple of things. Sometimes he skips the having coffee and goes straight to work. By and large, there is a clear pattern. Half way through the week, she finds out he lives with a woman—Rita—and her child. They are not married; if they were she would know as much from the file. The boy might be fathered by the man or not, she does not know and she does not think it matters. What matters is that they both create an unnecessary distraction.

At the end of the week she calls Smith. It’s evening and so she dials his home number rather than the one to his office. She chooses the time strategically—she wants to find her way into his private life. _Nothing’s private in the Third Reich_ , a voice tells her before she silences it.

She lets it ring. She waits.

“Yes?”

“Obergruppenführer Smith?”

“Miss Crain.”

His voice is deep and smooth. She can almost imagine him standing in his office, the receiver lightly pressed against his ear.

“I have sketched the target’s routine, sir,” she begins, knowing a man like him does not like to waste time. “I shall make contact in the following week in a diner where the target takes his coffee. I am walking a dog in the area for a wealthy family.”

“Very well,” he says.

“There might be a problem,” she tells him then, knowing it’s too soon to discuss this.

“Yes?”  

“He shares the apartment with a woman and a child. They might be—“ she stops herself, thinking of what to say. “They might be distracting.”

She hears him move. There is a momentary pause. She imagines him looking out of a window. “What do you suggest we do about this distraction?”

“I don’t know, sir,” she admits, truthfully.

“Try to sway the target. If it won’t do, they will be dealt with.”

She nods, knowing all too well he cannot see her.

“Thank you, Miss Crain," he says after a pause. "I will hear from you in one week, I trust?”

“Yes, sir,” she says. “Thank you, sir.”

She hears a voice in the background, a child’s voice—happy, oblivious.

“Heil Hitler,” he tells her absently and before she manages to reply. His end of the line goes silent.

 

__________________________

 

She reports to The Resistance over longer periods of time. She does not know if her apartment is bugged by the Party. She treats it as if it was. She meets her uncle on Monday evening. They talk in his van. George Dixon is a man in his late-forties, with thick grey hair, small brown eyes and an uncharacteristically high-pitched voice. They are not related—not where biology is concerned. He had an affair with her mother and fathered her little sister, who died along with the rest of her family in a massive air raid at the end of the war. Juliana was the only one to survive. This is what her stepmother told her when she realized she had learned to love the child who was meant for sacrifice.

“You have the right to know Juliana,” she said back then. “It’s your life. Fate is fluid and destiny is in the hands of men."

She has never told him she knows—she does not think she ever will. She works for him because she believes his cause but she does not follow him blindly.

There is not much to say, not about John Smith and Operation Zeitgeist anyway. She tells him about her mission, about the film she is supposed to retrieve. She mentions the man’s name. He writes it down.

“I see what I can find.”

She leaves the van; pleased their talk is over.

 

__________________________

 

She truly finds a family who needs someone to walk their dog. The woman has two small children on her hands and the man works in the media industry from early morning until late at night.

She shows up for the interview in her uniform. The woman’s eyes widen in shock. When she asks Juliana after her reasons for wanting to walk their dog, she does not lie.

“I always wanted a dog—but I can’t have one in my apartment. It’s against the rules.”

They shake hands and in the end the woman seems to be more pleased with this turn of events than anything. _She thinks she has just made a powerful friend_ , Juliana thinks as she descends the stairs from the family’s lavish apartment, _and she is not wrong_.

 

__________________________

 

She goes to the diner four days out of five. He comes every time. First two times she sits in the booth, later she closes the distance and moves to the bar. He does not notice her and he won’t, not in the civil clothes she wears—she’ll have to use the dog.

At the end of the week, she calls John Smith; same time, same number. He picks it up, almost immediately.

She informs him about her unsuccessful attempt to make contact. She also tells him about her plan.

He considers it for a moment, then asks as a matter of fact: “What kind of dog is it? Not some silly Chihuahua, I hope.”

Forgetting herself, she laughs.

“It’s a Siberian Husky, sir.”

“Good,” he says and she swears she could hear a trace of amusement in his voice.

           

__________________________

 

On Tuesday she picks up the dog early. An early appointment, could I come an hour early? Of course, come whenever it suits you. She ties the dog in front of the diner; then she walks in. Joe Blake is already there, drinking his large cup of black coffee. She sits next to him, orders. The dog starts to bark. Two minutes later, it grows aggressive.

 _Good boy_ , she thinks, turning around. There is no reason for the dog to be barking apart from the fact that she has smeared his nose with cat fur. The waitress gives her a look. Juliana jumps of the stool. “Sorry,” she says. The man beside her looks at her. Then he turns to look at the dog outside.

“I'll calm him down,” she tells the waiter and walks out without paying. She pets the dog, talking to him in a mild tone. Then, shielding the view from inside the diner with her own body, she washes the dog’s nose with a moist napkin. Back inside she sits down again and takes a sip of her coffee.

“Your dog?” The man next to her asks. She turns to him. Contact made.

“No, unfortunately not. I just walk him.”

“He’s beautiful.”

She nods and turning to see the white husky behind the glass doors she smiles. “Yeah, he is.”

They talk about the dog then; his name, his age, his breed; where does she go with him; is she from around here; has she tried this park or that. They walk out the diner together. He pats the dog then.

“My name is Joe, by the way,” he says.

She shakes his hand. “Juliana.”

She accompanies him to the bus station. He enters the bus, she continues walking.

“Until tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you then.”

 

__________________________

 

 

It goes smooth after that. On Tuesday he asks after the dog. She tells him she usually picks him up later—yesterday was an exception, something at the office came up. He asks her about her job, she tells him she is a secretary. Luckily he does not ask where.

On Friday, she sits in the booth, reading newspaper and she is pleasantly surprised when he asks her if he can join her. They talk about a new movie, a remake of Fritz Lang’s _M_ that has caught her eye. She says she would like to see it, silently hoping he might propose they go together. The conversation takes a different turn.

“My girlfriend hates Fritz Lang. She says he’s too artsy for her.”

Juliana narrows her eyes momentarily—she knew this would be a problem, besides who does not like Fritz Lang? After a second—a second she makes sure he is aware of, she forces smiles. It does not touch her eyes.

“Maybe she is right,” she tells him, making a show of her mock jealousy. “After I go and see it, I will tell you how I liked it.”

Later that evening, she picks up her phone and calls the number she keeps on a little piece of paper next to her receiver by now. Once again, he picks up immediately. His voice is raw this time. After she hears him exhale, she knows why; cigarettes.

“I would like to meet in person,” she tells him.

There is a moment of silence.

“Yes?”

“Tomorrow at 15:00. Seneca Village Site.”

 “Tomorrow at 16:00.”

“Very well, sir.” She is glad he has agreed. “Look for the dog,” she tells him before they both hang up the phone.

 

__________________________

 

She asks if she can have the dog the next day—her niece is in town, she says. The owner of the dog agrees of course. She lets the dog jump in the back seat of her car and heads towards the park. It is the traditional rendezvous spot for New Yorkers with secrets to discuss. Neither the Nazi's nor the Resistance have yet to devise a means of bugging a large open space. She comes in earlier, rolls out a blanket, couple of snacks, a bowl for the dog, two bottles of water and a disk that she throws into the distance for the dog to catch. It’s August and she choses to wear a light, cream like dress. It is not long before someone approaches her trying to make a conversation, she sends him off packing. She is waiting for someone—her boyfriend.

The Obergruppenführer is punctual to the second. She misses him at first. It’s the lack of uniform. In dark brown pants a light blue shirt with rolled up sleeves and fashionable dark sunglasses, he looks like someone else—someone normal. 

When he arrives at her side, he lets the newspaper fall carelessly on the checkered blanket. The dog comes to him, sniffing his hands, before deciding on his affection. The man beside her crouches down as his bare hands start messing with the white fur. The dog squeals with pleasure.

 _Shouldn’t animals know the nature of men?_ She asks herself as she watches the domestic scene in front of her. _Maybe they do_ , she thinks.

She hands the man the disk. He throws it.

“No man can resist a beautiful young woman with a dog,” he tells her then, approvingly.

She smiles, her blue eyes scanning his sharp profile. “You included?”

He does not look at her but she sees the corner of his lips twitch upwards. When the dog brings the disk back, he throws it again.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“The distraction.”

He clenches his jaw. She explains.

"He won’t just tell me, sir,” she says, resolutely. “Not if I am a random girl he sees over his morning coffee.”

“It has only been a week.”

He is right of course, but time is an essential factor. “It can take weeks, months, even years before he tells me anything about his past.”

He turns to face her. Seeing her image reflected in his square sunglasses, she raises her chin. There is a moment of silence. The dog comes back. Waving his tail, he drops the disk and starts asking for attention. He bumps into the man’s hand; then licks it.

“The woman and her son will be taken care of.”

She wants to ask how and when exactly but quickly decides against it. He starts stroking the dog’s head; once again his features relax.

“Thank you,” she says then. “It will make things progress much quicker.”

“Efficiency,” he murmurs as if he was addressing the animal in front of him rather than her. “That’s what the Reich is all about, isn’t it?”

She nods. They are in agreement then.

“I am sorry for dragging you here, I just—“

“Don’t trust your phone?”

“Any phone.”

He smiles an understanding smile. “The shortcomings of being a spy.”

 _No_ , she thinks as forces her lips to form a tight smile, _the shortcomings of living in a state run by criminals._

“It will take a while,” he says then, collecting the English version of the _Völkischer Beobachter_ from the blanket. “In the mean time, try to secure the target.”

“Yes, sir,” she says.

He turns to leave. Then stops. “What’s his name?” he asks, gesturing to the radiant animal.

“Maverick.”

           

            __________________________

 

  
At the diner, Joe Blake starts to seek her out. When she is late, he is worried. When she comes early, he seems troubled to have kept her waiting. They never plan to see each other, or talk about what this friendship of theirs is, they just do what they have done from the start. They talk. Month in she tells him about wanting to go to the park with the dog during the weekend. After some pressure, he agrees to come. They have fun—running around, reading. The dog is happy and so is she. She is falling in love again. Not with Joe, but with life—its beauty and simplicity. She has experienced this once before. It was when she bought a plant for her apartment in the Pacific States. Her life was a lie back then; her job for the Trade Minister was given to her through contacts with the Yakuza; her flat was paid for by the GNR’s embassy; her love affair with Frank was a matter of convenience, but the asparagus plant was real. It was genuine and hers and it has withered away just like everything she has ever had.

Later in the evening on their way home, they buy a hotdog at a stand. He smears mustered on his face. She wipes it away with her thumb. There is a moment, when she thinks he might kiss her. It passes as quickly as it comes.

She calls John Smith to update him on her progress. There is not much to say. On Monday, she meets with her uncle.

He gives her a file titled Joe Blake. She opens it. There is nothing new apart from the identity of her target’s father.

She gasps.

“It’s top security. It took us weeks until we got to it. Susan did not even want to share this with you at first.”

She laughs bitterly—Susan has never trusted her and why should she, after all.

“Thank you,” she says.

George Dixon shakes his head. “You deserve to know you are dealing with Martin Heusmann’s only living offspring.”

 Juliana narrows her eyes at his terminology. _Offspring_ , she thinks, _sometimes you talk like them_. She asks about The Man in the High Castle, then. Who is he? What films does he produce?

“You don’t need to know.”

“Don’t I?”

“Susan does not think so.”

“I don’t give a damn what Susan thinks!” she barks, losing her temper. She looks out of the window, her eyes scanning the massive columns of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“She wants it, doesn’t she?” she asks then.

A nod.

“No.”

Dixon raises his eyebrows. “I am afraid you don’t have a say in this.”

“The movie is not important,” she tells him, her voice cool once again. “My closeness to John Smith is.”

“That’s why the movie will never go through your hands.”

She swallows, realizing they are planning on going behind her back.

“He won’t just give it to you, George.”

“He will have no other choice.”

She looks at him briefly; shortly after, she exits the car. They are putting her mission—her whole life on the line and for what? A film? She won’t have it. Not without knowing what the films are truly about.  

           

__________________________

 

She goes through the libraries. Catalogues. She does not find anything about The Man in the High Castle. In the end she decides to go to the Archives in the Tower. They have a file, the chubby woman behind the counter tells her, but she does not have the authorization to see it. She leaves the building—the uniform she has not worn in weeks stiff on her body.

It is Wednesday evening, day after her inquiry. She expects the phone to ring. She expects to hear his voice putting her in place. She knew this would happen going in. She knew there was no way they wouldn’t tell him if someone asked for a file such as this.

She does not hear her phone ring. Instead, the electricity goes out. She rises to her feet, suddenly alert. There is knock on her front door. She does not need to fake her surprise—she _is_ surprised that he would come to deal with this in person. It must be important. More important than she imagined. 

“Obergruppenführer!”

“Juliana,” he says, his face unreadable.

She lets him in.

“May I offer you something?”

“No.”

She pours herself a glass of wine. “Too bad,” she says confidently as the glass in her hand trembles.

He narrows his eyes. Lit by the dim white lights of the street lamps, his razor sharp features make him look like a hostile watchdog ready for a fight.

“It was worth a try,” she shrugs him, leaning against her counter.

He takes off his cap and sinks into one of her armchairs. All of his movements deliberate.

“You are more reckless than I thought, Miss Crain.”

She shouldn’t push it—she does.

“Am I?”

He tilts his head.

“You did it on purpose.”

She smirks. Check.

He rises from his self-made throne, walks towards her. “You knew they would never give you the file, just as you knew they would tell me you asked for in the first place and now you know two things.”

He puts his hand on the counter next to hers. Their faces only inches apart. She swallows, forcing the muscles in her face to relax. She was not scared before, she is scared now—but not of him. She is scared of herself. She is scared of the way her eyes slide down his face to find his lips—of the way her body seems to urge her to close the distance between them.

“You know,” he whispers, “that your mission is not authorized and because of that, you know I will have to yield some information to you.”

He is so close she can feel the warmth of his breath on her face. She looks up; meeting his usually hazel eyes turned steel.

“You said you _asked_ for me,” she asks suppressing the impulse to put her hand on his chest. “I would think you did so for a reason.”

He smiles a cold smile.

“Pour the glass.”

Exhaling in relief, she does. Putting some space between them he seats himself at the opposite side of the kitchen table.

The tension in her muscles slowly eases, the tension in the room less so.

He tells her about Hawthorne Abendsen, about The Man in the High Castle. He vaguely describes the films.

“Propaganda,” she says.

“Maybe; maybe not.”

That surprises her. “You said they show alternative reality.”

He gives her a slight nod; she narrows her eyes in disbelieve.

“You think they are—“

“Real?” he interrupts her. “No.” He shifts uncomfortably. “But they might seem that way to others.”

 _The others_ , she thinks, _the ones that waver, the ones who doubt._ The problem is, there is no belief without doubt. Doubt is the essence of belief. Even when society abandons religion, man always seem to remain a subject to belief; reducing himself to create fake gods he can feverishly adopt—ideology is just another form of heaven; a future one will never see. But the man in front of her does not believe in a better tomorrow for tomorrow’s sake. He believes in himself, in what he can do under present conditions and when seeing the possibility of another, perhaps better path, he hesitates—and those who hesitate are not lost.

He does not tell her if The Man in the High Castle produces the films, he says he does not know and she believes him. She asks about Joe Blake. She knows what she needs already, but that he does not know.

“The nature of Blake’s importance is not substantial to your mission,” he tells her resolutely, rising from the chair.

Reddened through the intake of wine, she watches as his lips form a thin line. There is a moment of silent contemplation. She feels drawn to him then just as before. Standing up, she picks up his cap from the kitchen counter and hands it to him. Their fingers don’t touch, but he uses the repeated closeness to bow his head to hers and whisper in her ear. 

She stills.

“Next time you want to know something; you come to me. Is that clear?”

She swallows, her throat dry. She nods.

“Good night, Miss Crain,” he tells her then and walks out of the room in a quick pace.

Her knees trembling, she collapses on the floor.

The electricity sets in only a moment later.

 

__________________________

 

She dreams about him that night. She has dreamed about him before. When she was still a child her brain would envision and old man in a uniform—an impersonal monster. He would be the image and the cause of all evil, and she would shoot him and run and wake up in cold sweat before his guards would put a bullet in her brain. When she met him five years ago, the dreams changed. The man received a face, young and handsome one. She would enter his office, pull out the gun and hesitate. Someone would fire a shot then. Sometimes it would be him, sometimes his guard. She would wake up, then, breathing heavily.

“What did you see?” Frank would ask her, but she would only shake her head and nuzzle against him.

“Something terrible.”

Tonight, it is different. Tonight she is not in his office and she does not have a gun. Tonight, he is in her apartment and when he comes close he puts his hands on her hips and pushes her against the counter. His body pressed against hers, he devours her and she responds in turn, running her fingers through his hair, biting into his lower lip. Then the lights turn on.

Her heart beating, her breath heavy, she wakes up in shock. This is not something she wanted—something she ever imagined. Of course, her sex was essential for those who decided to entrust her with the operation. They imagined she would seduce him; just like he now imagines she will seduce Joe Blake and she was prepared for that. She was prepared for having to touch the man she was meant to kill but she has never entertained the idea of _wanting_ to do it.

She lies on her back, waiting for the sun to rise.

 

__________________________

 

Juliana does not tell the resistance about her inquiries. When asked about the electricity fallout, she shrugs her shoulders and blames it on some unspecified repairs.

“There were no repairs,” George Dixon tells her.

“Yeah,” she says mockingly, thinking of his cover of convenience. “You would know.”

He asks her if John Smith showed up.

She denies it and he does not push it further. In contrast to Susan, George trusts her—he shouldn’t, not anymore. She was convinced about the Operation Zeitgeist once, once before the mission even received a name, a name she chose. She is not so convinced anymore. There is no clear division between good and evil and even if there was; put in one pan the evil the “pure” have poured out upon the world, and in the other the evil that has come from men without principles and without scruples, the scale would tip toward the first. Fanatics are, after all, incorruptible—unable to change. If you are ready to kill for an idea, you are just as ready to get yourself killed for one. But John Smith is not a fanatic. She knows that more now more than ever. He kills, but for himself. Death cannot change the world. Change requires action and there is no action in death.

 

__________________________

 

  
Juliana continues to meet with Joe—she likes being around him. It allows her to forget why she meets him in the first place. He has an addicting laugh and kind eyes that never turn hard. He is easy-going, easier than Frank has ever been.

They do not kiss or hold hands. There is no clear romance to speak of and yet sometimes he looks at her for second too long and she knows there is potential.

 When the doorbell rings, she does not expect him.

 “I did not know where else to go.”

She lets him in. He smells of alcohol.

“What happened?”

“I—“ he starts, then shakes his head. “This was a stupid idea. I hardly know you.”

She stars at him; he turns to leave.

“Stop,” she yelps then, catching his arm. “What’s wrong, Joe?!”

“Nothing. I just got myself in some royal shit.”

“What?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s too dangerous to tell anyone, but I fucked up.”

She swallows, her hand still on his arm.

“It can’t be that bad,” she tries, even though she very well knows it’s worse than the girl he thinks he knows could ever imagine.

He laughs a frantic laughter. “Oh, but it is bad. Remember when I told you I went to the Neutral Zone to earn some money truck driving? I was there on a mission—for the Party, and I stole something.”

 _He has the film_ , she thinks as her eyes scan his reddened face. “You stole something from the Nazi Party?” she asks.

“No,” he shakes his head. “Well, yes, that too.”

She stars at him.

“What is going on, Joe.”

“They found me. I don’t know how, but they did.”

“The Party?”

“No for fuck’s sake! The Resistance!”

She sits down, slowly. “All right, Joe. You work for the Party. You go to the Neutral Zone—then what?”

He runs his hand through his hair in a desperate fashion.

“Then I stole a film from someone, who has ties with the resistance. Some man I was supposed to give some information, or so he believed.”

“What film?”

“This film,” he says and throws it on the table in front of her.

“You brought it here!” she proclaims, trying to sound appalled.

“It can’t stay at home, they know where I live.”

“Then give it to the Party. That’s why you should have done in the first place, isn’t it?

“I can’t,” he says, shaking his head.

“Why? You get yourself killed! What about the kid, Joe!”

He clenches his jaw. “You have not seen it, Juliana. If you did you could not give it to the Party either—it looks so real. It shows a different world, a better world, perhaps.”

“What do you want to do with it? Watch it in your bedroom while eating snacks? This is dangerous!”

“I don’t know—“ he breathes. “I will think of something. For now, I need somewhere to hide it.”

Her eyes widen. “No,” she says, resolutely, hoping he won’t be so easily convinced. “You can’t be serious.”

“I don’t trust anyone else, Juliana. It’s just for couple of days—until I think of something to do.”

“Why not just give it back.”

He laughs a desperate laughter and shakes his head. “So I give it back, and what are _they_ going to do? Kill me? Kill Rita? The moment I lose the movie I lost my bargaining chip.”

She looks away from him. “All right,” she says finally. “You have two days. Then I burn the damn thing.”

He nods. “You won’t have to.”

“Now get up and go home before your girlfriend starts to worry,” she tells him, her tone bitter.

He gets up and reaching for her hand he whispers, “I am sorry, Juliana.”

“Go home, Joe.” She does not let him touch her. “Don’t make this even more complicated than it is.”

He gives her a slight nod; his previously reddened face now pale. He leaves, the door slamming shut behind him.

She does not move; her eyes fixed on the disc film in front of her. When she does move, it is to pick up her phone.

            She dials the number and lets it ring.

            Once, twice, three times, four—

            “Yes?”

            “I have the film.”


	4. The Contradiction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First. Thank you so much for all your lovely feedback. I am truly shocked how popular this has become. Thank you! I will try my best to update in somewhat regular intervals, but as it is real life things have caught up with me and hence the process will be slower. 
> 
> Second. My gratitude goes to my amazing beta Ana_Khouri, who know only proof-read this chapter but also all the previous ones. Thank you! You are a savior. 
> 
> Third. I hope you'll enjoy! It's movie time.

_“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”_

Georges Bataille

 

* * *

 

She sits at her kitchen table, waiting. The film disk lies in front of her. She has not moved it or touched it since it has been placed there.

There is a part of her that cannot believe what she sees. Surely it couldn’t have been this easy—a couple of nice words, a smile and the young man entrusts her with the one thing he knows could slit his throat. _It could be a trap_ , she thinks. Perhaps he has joined forces with the Resistance; perhaps Susan wants to test her, or perhaps it is all Smith’s doing—the film, the boy, this whole charade, only so they would catch her unaware, only so that she would make a mistake. But she hasn’t so far, and if she makes a mistake in the future, it won’t be a mistake he could condemn.

The lights in the room flicker and before she manages to raise her head they are out.

A minute later, there is knock. She stands up, wandering if the bell is powered by electricity or if he simply chooses not to use it. She opens the door, lets him in. She is relieved he came alone. The corridor, too small to accommodate two people at once, pushes them together. They are close, too close; neither of them moves. There is a moment of silence, a moment of soundless anticipation. She knows, he knows, he should not be here. Not now, perhaps not ever. Not if things truly are the way they seem on the surface. What if the boy comes back? What if the Resistance watches her house? What if they recognize him? What if this visit will jeopardize her mission?

Those questions are groundless. She thinks—hopes.

“Where is it?” he asks, his voice calm, leveled.

She looks up. Dressed in civil clothes he looks less commanding, less cruel and yet the lines of his perfect face retain their sharpness.

She leads him into the small kitchen.

He stops. They both stare at the disk placed on the top of her plastic tablecloth and in the stillness of the night, she cannot help but notice the steady regularity of his breath.

“I want to watch it,” she tells him then. It is the truth.

He clenches his jaw.

“There is a projector upstairs,” she continues and turns to face him despite her body’s light trembling. Her arms are crossed on her chest.

“No.”

“Why are you here, then?”

He shoots his head towards her and she watches as his usually soft-lit hazel eyes grow to steel. She can feel her heart beating in her ears. She does not move, does not step back. Instead, she raises her chin, aligning his sight with hers.

He is not a man who responds to weakness.

“You said those films were good,” she tells him pointedly, the adrenalin pulsing through her blood clearly audible in her now firm voice. “You said they were too good to be mere propaganda and yet at the same time told me you did not believe they were anything but.”

She should leave it at that, she knows. She should just let it go, but the dim scent of his cologne urges her to go on. She is a bullfighter teasing her pray, but instead of wielding a red flag she has decided to wear the flag on her body. If she fails, there will be no escape.

“You don’t like to simply _believe_ what others say, do you?” she asks him, hoping she is right in her assumptions—hoping her intuition is correct. “That’s why you are here.”

Despite all her training, the last words seem to die in her throat. The room falls silent. Unable to withstand his gaze, she looks away. It is then that she bites her lip—a habit she has spent years unlearning. She thought she could do this, she thought she could outwit him, making him play her game. Maybe she can’t. The authority he seems to yield petrifies her, but she cannot stay away. Not because of some elusive task she has been given when she was only a child, but because of the pull she feels whenever her body finds itself near his.

Long seconds pass in silence. She feels his stare burning onto the side of her face. She does not glance back at him. She can’t.

“Is it safe?”

She jerks her head towards him, her blue eyes wide in shock. “No,” she tells him, truthfully. “Of course, not.”

Exhaling deeply, he gives her a brief nod. “Lead the way.”

She does.

 

__________________________

 

 

The attic is old and unused. She knows about the projector only because it is no longer in use. Her neighbor—an old woman, whose strong German accent reveals her ancestry—told her that before she moved in, a man from the sixth floor dealt in underground pornography. After the police discovered his little business, his films were confiscated and he was sent to jail for national offence. His equipment, however, was left behind.

There are no cameras in the attic. No bugs. But one can never be sure and so neither of them speaks. She sets up the projector, he hands her the disk. The clear white light projected on the opposite wall lights their faces. _They both must look like corpses_ , she thinks, as she notices the gray color of her own skin. She looks up in order to meet his gaze. He has been watching her, she knows. His face is a firm, unyielding mask but his eyes seem attentive, almost soft. He does not help her, does not touch the film unless he has to. She wonders why. Once more she entertains the idea of a ploy. Are there soldiers downstairs? Will they torture me? Will they kill me? If so, it’s too late now to go back on her word. If her destiny is to die here and now, she is already dead. So why is she afraid?

She gives him a brief nod.

He turns his head to the screen.

She lets the film to start.

 

__________________________

 

 

She does not know how many times she re-plays the film. She does not know how many times she stood up to re-set the disc and how many times she has sat back down again. All she knows is that the images showed the United States winning the war. It showed their flags over the Europe and Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin smiling at each other at what seems a friendly get-together. All she knows is that she has seen a prospect of life under the condition of peaceful democracy rather than oppressive system. It would seem that Albert Speer’s creations are no more everlasting than any other product made out of concrete, since not even eternity engraved in stone survives a blow of dynamite.

In the end, it is her companion who puts the stop to her foolish conduct. She gets up wanting to replay the film once more, but his hand catches her forearm and presses it against his chest. The sudden contact shocks her. Stopping in her tracks she looks up at him as if he was a ghost.

“Enough, Juliana,” he whispers in her ear. “Enough.”

Letting go of her, he turns off the light of the projector and the room disappears in darkness, before her eyes adjust to the low light of the moon shining in through a small roof window.

“I—” she mumbles, but he stops her by putting a finger in front of her lips. He does not touch her, but she seems to feel him all the same. She stops speaking. He packs the film disk back into its box and hides it in the pocket of his coat.

Taking hold of her arm once again, he leads her back to her apartment.

Before they enter the hallway, he tells her in low voice that if they were to meet anyone, they will act like lovers.           

 

__________________________

 

 

Back in the safety of her de-electrified apartment, he hands her the film. She looks at him, her eyes inquisitive.

“You want me to give it back to him?”

“Yes, Miss Crain. That is exactly what I want.”

She wants to ask why; she doesn’t—she thinks she knows.

He turns to leave, then stops himself. “We committed a treason tonight, Miss Crain. I hope you are aware of that.”

Nodding, Juliana forces herself to meet his gaze. “I know,” she tells him and before he can turn away, she utters: “I don’t regret it.”

He clenches his jaw only to force it to relax. There is a moment of silence. She holds her breath.

“I am surprised to say that neither do I.”

There is something strange in his tone—something simultaneously foreign and utterly familiar. It is still his voice, the rich menacing tenor she secretly hopes to hear every time her phone rings, but there is a new quivering intensity to it.

“Good night, Miss Crain,” he tells her, his eyes lingering on her face.

“Good night, Obergruppenführer.”

           

__________________________

 

 

It is Sunday and her neck hurts from an uneasy rest. She has fallen asleep in her clothes on top of her covers—her head spinning with imageries of altered past, a _better_ past. Is this truly what life could have been? Peaceful and free?

Hugging her pillow she turns on her side. The morning sun burns on her face.

All that time, she thought she knew what she was fighting for. Freedom of speech, freedom of belief, diversity, peace. But all those things were nothing but empty concepts. Nothing but vague ideals she was taught to admire.

It is hard to fight for righteousness if all you know is hell.

She has always known her mission. She has known what she would be asked to do and why, but she has also known the people in her school and neighborhood. She has met her step-father’s grinning colleagues and friends, who wore striped armbands on their light suits, and their charming wives who would bring her chocolates from foreign countries and smile at her kindly when she would devour them. She has befriended guileless girls with whom she played in the park and talked about boys and she has made friends with the strong, determined women in the _Schutzstaffel_. She has known and knows them all and for better or worse, she considers herself to be one of them.

She was supposed to pretend, instead she became.

She was never an ardent Nazi, of course. She could not be. Her stepfather read too much of Brecht and Mann for her to forget what the world has lost. But she was not a true believer either. She could not bring herself to imagine a different world. She could not believe that everyone she knew and loved was vile.

The film has changed that, in part. It gave the vague vision of her childhood a more specific shape. It showed her a viable alternative.

Lying in her bed, she finds herself envisioning a different future—one that allows the people she knows to be compassionate and thoughtful, one that allows them to be free.

She thinks of the man she has watched the film with. She thinks of the slight tremble in his voice and the dim spark in his hazel eyes. She thinks of her mission and the absurdity of it. A regime is not a snake. You cannot simply cut of its head and expect it to die.

She forces herself to sit up and for the first time in her life she truly considers disobeying her orders. She considers what could happen if she did not try to kill him.

           

__________________________

 

 

There is a harsh bang on the door. Juliana jumps from her coach, alert. All day, she has waited for this, now it is here. She has prepared what to say—a nice little speech about what kind of an idiot he is to put his family in danger in this way. When she opens the door, she realizes he might already know.

Joe stumbles inside. Unshaven and unwashed, he glares at her, his eyes bloodshot and wet; his clothes smeared with black smudges.

“What happened?”

“They set them on fire,” he blurts out, as he slides down, leaving black marks all over her light cream wall. “Rita and Buddy. They just—“

It takes her a moment to register what he is saying. When she does gasps in shock.

“Are they—?” she asks, as she puts her hand in front of her mouth and joins him on the floor. She has not foreseen this. Perhaps she should have.

“Buddy’s dead,” he says, his voice trembling. “The fire trapped him in his room. He was dead before they got to him.”

Her eyes widen in terror. She clenches her jaw. She wants to say something but she does not trust her voice to speak.

She did this. She asked them to be _removed_ and now the boy is dead. It is her fault. Juliana hugs her knees; her cheeks become wet with silent tears as she stares into the infinity. Next to her, Joe’s body shakes with uncontrollable sobs.

“I am so sorry,” she whispers then. He does not seem to hear her. She does not care. She is not really apologizing to him, but to the child she called a distraction—she is apologizing to the boy she has killed.

They sit in silence. The ticking of the kitchen clock appears somehow louder. More demanding. “’It’s eleven o’clock. Time moves on,’” it seems to say, “’and so should you.’” But she cannot and neither can he—not right now at least. She closes her eyes and thinks of the man she had so much hope in only a couple of hours ago. Did he know the child would die? Was it an accident? Or did he make sure it would happen?

“Rita’s in the hospital,” he says finally as he stares on the opposite wall. “I should go to her.”

She gives him the briefest of nods.

 _Yes_ , she thinks, _you should_.

“I have killed him Juliana,” he whispers then and she can hear the heart break in his voice. “He was like a son to me and I killed him because I could not part with some stupid film.”

“You did no such thing!” she cries out. She wants to shake him and slap him and scream at him.

She wants to tell him the truth.

She can’t.

“You were not the one who set the fire to your apartment, Joe. The person who did that is responsible—not you.”

 _It’s me,_ she wants to scream from the top of her lungs. _It’s me and your superior who are to blame, not you._

He shakes his head in resignation. “I was stupid. I should have gotten rid of it the moment I could.”

Carefully, he stands up. She stars at him.

“Do you still have it?”

She nods, uneasily.

“Give it to me, then. It can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous. I’ll take it with me to the hospital and when I am done there, I take it to where I was supposed to take it in the first place.”

“You’ll give it to the Party.”

 He opens his mouth but closes it again before he speaks. Running a hand through his hair, he rubs his grim face.

“Yeah,” he says then, his voice forbearing. “I’ll tell them the truth and hope for the best. Rita needs their protection now—I can’t let the bastards from the Resistance to hurt her again. If I make this right again, maybe she will be safe.”

She stands up, and forcing herself to hold his gaze, she says:

“Do what you need to.”

Taking the film from her packed bookshelf, she hands it to him. Before he manages to turns away, she presses her body against his in a fierce embrace. Slowly, she feels him to relax.

“Be safe, Joe,” she whispers and means it.  

Kissing the top of her head, he nods. “Thank you, Juliana,” he says then, his voice still unsteady. “Thank you for everything.”

She gives him a weak smile, her blue eyes still wet from crying. This is not the last time they meet. Unlike him, she knows that. There will be more lies, more charades—but in this moment, none of that matters. A child has died and she is the one to blame.

 


	5. Next Steps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not abandoned this, don't worry. There is just too much real work in the way and hence updating might take a while. Thank you so much for your incredible feedback. I believe I have said something similar last time, but i can hardly believe how popular this has become. (Also you guys make me laugh. Like yes, "nothing like killing a child to make you forget you had a crush on Nazi.") 
> 
> The quote this time American journalist, playwright Fulton Oursler. It was a though choice, but in the end, I think this was the most fitting choice. 
> 
> Finally, I just want to once again thank Ana_Khouri for her proofreading and her suggestions! She is also the one who should be credited with the title of this chapter.

_"Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves—regret for the past and fear of the future."_

Fulton Oursler

 

* * *

  

In the morning, she is summoned to his office. She calls the woman whose dog she walks and apologizes.

            “I am sorry, I won’t make it today.”

            “Oh, don’t worry, sweetie.”

She takes a shower. Puts on her clothes. Her eyes are puffy and red, lined with dark circles which she tries to hide under a thin layer of make-up. Before she leaves her apartment she glances at herself in the mirror. A uniform stares back.

 

__________________________

 

 

They let her in immediately upon her arrival.

            “The Obergruppenführer is waiting for you, ma’am,” a young man tells her. She follows him inside.

The room, unexpectedly dark due to the closed blinds, carries a piquant scent of cigarette smoke. She expects him behind his desk, but the light is turned of and the seat is vacant. The young man directs her to the small seating space on the side where he sits in a large armchair, its dark leather contrasting with the aggressive whiteness of his shirt.

            “Miss Crain, sir.”

            “Thank you, Gary,” he says, voice hoarse. The young man leaves. Smith looks up from the folder-wrapped documents resting in his hands.

            “Sit, Miss Crain.”

            Holding her breath, she does so. There is something odd about him. He looks ruffled somehow—less alert. _He has slept here_ , she realizes with a surprise. _Or perhaps he hasn’t slept at all._

            “I would like to congratulate you. Your initial mission has been successful. Late last night Mr. Blake has contacted me with a very pleasing message. Apparently he discovered that he has been in the possession of the object in question all along and after some consideration, decided it would be better for everyone to return it to its rightful owners.”

            Clenching her jaw, she slowly folds her hands on her lap, forcing them not to tremble.

            “You don’t seem very pleased, Miss Crain.”

            She looks up at him, her azure eyes burning with sudden intensity.

            “Did you know, sir?”

            Narrowing his eyes, he tilts his head; long shadows breaking across the sharp lines of his face.

            “What are you referring to?” It should sound like a question, she thinks. It doesn’t.

            “Did you know the child would die?” Her voice is soft—it’s soft because all she wants to do is scream.

            He stares at her, the lines around his eyes deepening. Something she cannot place flashes over his face. His expression turns blank.

            “Ah. The boy, of course,” he says all too calmly for her taste. “An awful tragedy.”

            She shakes her head. What was she expecting? Regret? Was she truly that naïve? How many people has the man she lusts after in her sleep ordered dead? How many has he killed himself? How many did he tortured, and imprison? He is not like Frank. He is not even like Joe. He is like the men in Berlin, merciless and uncompromising—and this is why she has to kill him.

Her eyes start to water.

She has to kill him. She has to kill him soon.

            “Juliana.”

            Torn out of her contemplation by the sound of his husky voice, her head shoots towards him.

            “There are many things at stake here.”

            It is neither an apology nor an explanation. What it is is an empty statement imbued by the mirage of cosmic significance.

            “What things?”

            Ignoring her question he stands up and walks to the small bar at the opposite side of the office. She watches him then. She watches the way his shoulder muscles move underneath his shirt and hates herself for it. She should _hate_ him.

            He returns, placing a glass of whiskey into her hand. Their fingers brush. She wants to believe it’s accidental—it isn’t. The brief contact sends a jolt of electricity through her blood. It forces her to shudder.

When she looks up, she discovers him looking at her with unexpected tenderness.

            “Lives,” he says then.

It takes her a moment to recall what he’s referring to. The ‘many things at stake.’

            “Hundreds of thousands. Millions, perhaps.”

She stares at him, unbelieving. She shouldn’t trust him. It could be another lie—a meaningless declaration the Nazi Party seems to adore—but the way he breaths those numbers in an aching sigh leaves her startled.

She takes a conscious sip out of her glass and feels her throat clench in an unpleasant burning sensation. He sits opposite to her, waiting.

            “Why am I here, sir?”

He smiles weakly. “I want you to continue seeing Mr. Blake.”

She looks into her glass and watches the amber liquid sway from one side to the other.

            “Why?”

            “You are a good influence.”

            “I need more than that, sir.”

            “You don’t, Miss Crain.”

She takes another sip, lifting her eyes to his as she pulls the glass away and rest it on her knee, the mass of it solid in her hand. She is tired—tired of being a pawn moved around by others, of pretending, of lying and she is tired of wanting something she should not and cannot have.

            “Very well, sir” she says, her voice resigned. “If he comes back.”

            “He’ll come back.”

            “There is still his girlfriend.”

The moment the words leave her tongue she has to stop herself from gaging. This is what got the boy killed—her presumptuous stupidity.

            “His girlfriend will receive a new identity—for protection.”

 _How ironic_ , she thinks, her sight unfocused.

            “What about Joe?”

            “Mr. Blake will resume his work for the _Schutzstaffel._ That offers protection enough.”

            “I told him I was a secretary, sir. What will happen now when he finds out I am no such thing.”

Smith hands her one of the files resting on the coffee table.

            “You are now.”

She flips it open. It carries her name but it its not hers.

            “This is all he will have authorization for. As you see, you have been a secretary for a man who has recently abandoned his business responsibilities in order to dedicate his life to the Party. You have followed him and thus work now for the Party.”

She scans her employment section. Brigadeführer Mallory, 62, a former executive of IG-Farben, now full officer of the party. According to her file, she has worked for him ever since 1957.

            “I told Mr. Blake I went to the Pacific States on a trade mission,” she tells him as she scans the file in more detail. “As an assistant,” she adds.  

            “Very well, we will add it to the file. Anything else?”

She shakes her head pragmatically. “I don’t think so.” It was the first thing they taught her: ‘Don’t lie if you don’t have to.’

            “Good.”

            “How much does Brigadeführer Mallory know about me?”

            “The essentials. He knows enough to know how to play along if required, but not enough to piece anything together.”

She nods in understanding.

            “When do I start?”

            “Today.”

Momentarily, her eyes widen. Then she realizes the reason for the sudden abruptness—the scheme needs to look real. From now on every little thing needs to fit in its place. It’s not their move after all, it’s Joe’s, but they have to be ready.

            “What floor?”

            “Twelfth.”

            “Should I still walk the dog?”

Slowly, he tilts his head and she notices the slight streaks of gray around his temples.

            “Yes,” he says finally. “Brigadeführer Mallory was never an early riser. You start at 9:30.”

She chuckles frantically at the blatant lie. He ignores it, or so she thinks before noticing the muscles in his face soften at the sound.

She stands up, waiting to be dismissed.

            “You will continue to report to me, Juliana,” he tells her then, his voice commanding.

            “I am afraid I don’t understand, sir.”

The dark leather of the couch rustles as he moves to stand up. The gesture is not meant to be threatening and yet seeing him hover above her in the dim light of his office makes her heartbeat quicken with fear. But it is not just fear of him; it is also fear of herself. It is panic at the undeniable arousal buried in what should be nothing else than anger and fear and disgust.

            “Same procedure as before. You call once a week. If you won’t be able to for some reason, you come here and report in person.”

            “On what, sir?”

She sees his jaw clench.

At first she thinks the question not unreasonable, but she is here on his orders, on _his_ _authority,_ and she knows what no one else does. She knows he has watched the film and that makes her a threat. Their paths were always bound, she was always meant to meet him, but now there more than some elusive mission that binds them. They share a secret—a secret that gives her power over him. _He will never let me go_ , she thinks then as she swallows. She should be glad. It secures her position. It makes sure she will be able to do what she has to. She isn’t glad. She is terrified—terrified of being around, him terrified that when the day comes she will forget the monster and only see the man.

            “I—“ she starts. “Of course, Obergruppenführer.”

 

__________________________

 

She gets her own desk and her own typewriter. She receives phone calls and schedules appointments. She prepares documents and writes letters. In the morning she makes coffee and in the afternoon she brings lunch. She does not particularly like her job but she does not hate it either. It reminds her of her time in the Pacific States. When her days were filed with somewhat meaningful routine and she could live just one life, even if it wasn’t entirely hers.

            To her surprise she likes Mallory—an aging man with a flock of white hair and warm brown eyes that matched an autumn palette. With his ill-fitting uniform and disinterest in proper Party decorum, he does not seem to fit and yet he seems important enough for others to keep him around.

            “I am not a politician,” he tells her on the first day after he greets her. “I am a chemist; that’s what I know and that’s what I shall stick to.”

            “Why are you here, then?”

            He smiles a crooked smile.

            “Why indeed?”

 

__________________________

 

 

When she calls the first time she has nothing to report. Joe has not shown up—not at her apartment nor at the coffee shop. When she tells him as much, she expects him to say ‘Hiel Hitler’ and hang up.

He doesn’t.

            “Are you satisfied with your new position?”

            Alone in her apartment she blinks in confusion, actively aware of the tense muscles flexing in her neck. She misses the lost ease of their previous communiqués.

            “Of course, sir,” she says then as if reading off of a script. She should add something, something that would make him laugh. She can’t.

            The receiver rustles and she hears him let out a quiet sigh. There is a moment of silence. She wonders if he’ll say something. He doesn’t.

            “Good night, Miss Crain.”

            Sinking into herself, Juliana closes her eyes.

            “Good night, sir.”

           

__________________________

 

 

She sits in George’s old van. A week ago he requested to see her, immediately. She knows the cause of such urgency. He was the one to bug her phone after all.

            “You should have contacted us the moment you have received the film.”

            “I contacted John Smith.”

            “I know,” he snarls. “That you did.”

            She drops her eyes to her hands resting on her lap. Outside the cold autumn rain thunders on the windscreen.

            “Tell me what happened?”

            “What happened when?”

            “When Smith showed up, Juliana. Don’t play dumb for fuck’s sake,” he cries, his voice frantic, as his fist collides with the leather-bound stirring wheel.

            She thinks about what to say—what secrets she should keep and if any.

            “We discussed our next step.”

            “Which was?”

            She looks into his bloodshot eyes then. He has aged in the past couple of months, she notices, and it has not done him justice.

            “To keep it where it was and wait.”

            George Dixon shakes his head in desperation. “Unbelievable.”

            “George,” she yells, her jaw clenched. “The movie was never my concern.”

            “Oh, but it was,” he bites back. “Please do realize why we did not ask you to kill the man already! You are earning his trust so you can pass on information—a task you seem rather incapable of doing.”

            “It was the only way.”

            “Susan won’t have this.”

            Grinding her teeth, Juliana feels herself tense. In her lap, her fingers form into fists.

            “If I hadn’t called the man, he would know soon enough—my whole apartment is wired; you know that, you laid some of the wires yourself. Contacting Smith was the only option for us to stay in the game. I knew you wouldn’t like this but I had no choice.”

            He looks out of the window, his torso shifting with discomfort.

“What happened next?”

            She tells him. She tells him everything except for what happened in her attic. There is a part of her that wants to tell him that as well but even with the boy’s blood on her hands she is not ready to end the game just yet.

            When they part ways and she braves the cool rain it’s on a slightly better note. She has lost the film but not her strategic position and she has gained as well—she now works inside the Party Headquarters.

 

__________________________

 

 

Another week.

Another phone call.

She sits at her couch, the cold receiver resting in the palm of her hand.

She is less angry now.

Time dulls all pain and there is only so much sorrow one can experience before everything becomes numb. Every time someone dies. Every time _she_ dies in order to become someone else. Was there ever a moment when she truly felt alive? Was there an instance when she didn’t have to be alert? When she wasn’t made conscious of some horrible crime she should be weeping for—praying for?

            This whole, rotten society functions in this way. It is alert and violent and numb and dead all at the same time. It tolerates you only if you are successively servile and despotic; it is a prison without guards from which she’ll never escape without dying.

            “Miss Crain.”

            “Obergruppenführer.”

            “News?”

            “I am afraid not, sir.”

            “Then we shall wait.”

            Biting her lip, she stares intently at nothing in particular.

For a moment, neither of them speaks.

            “What makes you so sure he will come back?”

            Her heart beats three times in a quick sequence, before she fully comprehends his answer:

“You.”

           

__________________________

 

 

When Joe finally shows up on her doorstep the following week he looks like a different man. The ashen formfitting suit gives him a more serious look. The radiantly red armband dims his usually easy smile.

            “I am sorry,” he says as he comes to awkwardly stand in the middle of the living room. “I should have never brought the film here. I should have never endangered you in that way. I wasn’t thinking clearly…”

            “Joe,” she interrupts him as she closes the distance between them but he doesn’t stop.

            “No, Juliana,” he says, taking her hand into his. “I lied to you, endangered you and you still decided to help me. I—”

            “I lied to you too.”

            His head shoots up, eyes wide with surprise.

There is a part of her that wants to laugh. _Oh Joe_ , she thinks as she scans his sunned face, _I’ve been lying to you since the day we met._

            “I told you I work as a secretary in a firm. I used to, but not anymore. Every since I came back from the Pacific States I have been working for the Party.”

            “You what—?”

            “The man I work for used to be an executive of IG Farben serving as a lesion in the Pacific States. When the Party offered him a job as a state specialist he asked me to come with him. I wanted to come back to New York, so I agreed, but ever since I got back, I realized that people have a hard time seeing beyond the uniform.” She gives his hand a gentle squeeze. “I didn’t tell you, because I liked you and I didn’t want you to—”

            “It’s okay,” he consoles in a hushed tone as his hands find their way to cup her face. “It’s okay.”

            Nodding slightly she closes her eyes and rest her forehead against his.

            A moment later, he kisses her and she lets him.  

He is a good man she tells herself, a decent man, and despite all the lies and deceit she likes him. So why does it feel so hard? Why does it feel like he is not the only one she is betraying?


	6. Fall in

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know. It’s been ages. But real life caught up with me and I had to graduate. I AM BACK NOW AND I INTEND TO FINISH THIS THING I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT FOR AGES. 
> 
> Thank you for all your lovely comments to which I shall be replying now. (I did not want to do so before as I would have to say that no update is in sight.) Thank you for your support and your love. I am so, so glad you are enjoying this story, because so am I! Hopefully this update will not disappoint you, especially since the wait was so long. 
> 
> In regards to the chapter. There is no Meissen Porcelain in John’s office, but I think there should be. 
> 
> For clarification, Advent is a season of ca. four weeks before Christmas. The word comes from Latin and means as much as “coming,” and refers, of course, to the coming of Christ. Naturally Nazi Germany had some difficulty with the tradition as Jesus was after all a Jew and thus focused mostly on pre-Christian side of the festivities, trying to secularize the holiday as much as possible. For the sake of the story, I’ve nevertheless stuck to the Christian tradition. 
> 
> The concept of palingenesis in context of Fascism was introduced by the British political scientist Roger Griffin.

_“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded—for someone to play against himself is absurd._   
_It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.”_

Stefan Zweig

 

__________________________

 

 

 

She goes straight to his office the next morning, only to realize she does not have the proper clearance.

            _Of course_ , she thinks then, _how terribly naïve of me_.

            Once at her desk, she calls. It’s what she should have done in the first place—call, or let it be completely. His assistant tells her he is occupied. She leaves her name.

            “I know who you are, Miss Crain,” the man says and she can almost hear him smile into the receiver. He must think her odd.

The man does not call back for hours. When he does call her back, the dialogue is brief.

 

__________________________

 

It’s late afternoon and she tells Mallory she will have to leave for a moment.

            “You have better things to do than pick up my calls,” he smiles. “I understand,” he adds jokingly and waves her off with his right hand. There is a masked edge to his voice—a grievance of secrecy she cannot remedy. Mallory knows all too well he is being used, but he has played this game long enough to know better than to ask.

She is on the move. Her ears start brimming with office noise, the ringing of a phone, the rustling of paper, the clicking of a typewriter, the hasty talk, both in German and in English. It is the first time she takes a look at _them_. Not the men in neatly pressed suits, which hold the reins of the world, but the people who turn those men’s hypnotic words into action, who make this word _happen_. They are the people with whom she works now, people like her and most people she has ever known—petty bureaucrats, all of them.

The Resistance thinks that one death has the power of freeing millions, but what if the people you are freeing do not know they have been leading their lives in a cage? What if they don’t mind it? What if they created it themselves?

She calls the elevator and while staring at the dark gray doors and waits. _I should have waited until the week’s end_ , she thinks then. _I should have just waited and called_. There is nothing decisive she can tell him, nothing he would need to know straight away, and yet all she has been able to think about since last night was telling him.

The elevator announces its arrival with a subtle cling, the doors swing open and she walks in. There is no identification, no inspection. The man watching her through the camera in the top right corner knows who she is and where she is going. He knows she is expected. The elevator jolts with motion and she closes her eyes.

            She feels pathetic now.

            She feels like a child.

 _You don’t need his praise_ , she tells herself and she is not lying. She does not _need_ _it_ , she _wants it_ and perhaps that makes it worse.

As she arrives the man usually announcing her arrival stands up but makes no sign of the intention to follow her.

            “Obergruppenführer Smith expects you, Miss Crain,” he says pleasantly and signals with his hand towards the office door. “Please.”

Nodding, she walks in. She pays the man little attention. No matter what he might think or suspect she is not a secretary; she is a soldier and this is her battlefield. John Smith sits behind his desk, pen in his hand. His jacket is off. She imagines it being neatly folded somewhere out of sight. These offices always have back rooms, don’t they?

            “Miss Crain,” he greets her, momentarily looking up from the print-covered papers positioned on his lap. “Please, do sit down.”

            She does.

            He continues to read. His brow wrinkled with focus while his fingers play with the corner of his bottom lip. Weeks ago, she would have regarded such behavior as a shameless display of power. Now she has to force herself not to stare at his slightly swollen lips. He seems calm, relaxed. She assumes as much from the steady rising of his broad chest—from his unusually tranquil facial expression. _He trusts me_ , she thinks then. _After the film, he has no other choice._

            Diverting her gaze to the cabinet behind him, she examines the displayed objects. There is the omnipresent painting of Adolf Hitler—a flattering portrait of an aging man which somehow accomplishes depicting the man as both benevolent caretaker and the bloodthirsty hangman. On one of the shelves she sees a black miniature of Michelangelo’s David. It is conventionally beautiful—she has to admit—beautiful, perfectly proportional, and utterly impersonal. Other shelves display crystal glassware, selected pieces of Meissen porcelain with its characteristic blue adornments and medals. They are all familiar, the Iron Crosses, the exemplary awards, the army shields—all but one. Absently, she narrows her eyes; trying to decipher the engraved writing beneath it the circular piece metal cushioned in a velvet box.

            “It’s a campaign medal,” he tells her unexpectedly.

            “Excuse me?” She turns her head to him but his eyes are focused on the medal.

            “It used to be awarded by the government of the United States to anyone who served in the Asiatic-Pacific theatre.”

            There is a moment of brief silence.

            “We lost,” she says, her voice suddenly hoarse, her brain suddenly replaying the black and white images from not so long ago. _We_ , she thinks, _the Unites States_. “Why keep it?”  

            “As a reminder,” he tells her then in a steady voice. When she lets his eyes touch hers, she is met with nothing but a blank stare. “As a reminder of the consequences of failure of command.”

            Clenching her jaw, she nods slowly.

            “How can I help you?” he says, unmistakably changing the subject of the conversation.

            “You were right.”

            He tilts his head. “Was I?” he asks, his expression suddenly conceitedly self-assured.

            “Joe Blake came back to my apartment last night. He apologized and disclosed his affiliation with the Party. I followed suit.”

            Smith nods in understanding.

           “And then?” His words aim to form a question, but the tone of his voice remains stagnant.

            “He kissed me, sir,” she tells him truthfully. She feels herself blush then and scolds herself for it, but the color in her cheeks does not vanish.

The man opposite to her narrows his eyes.

She finds his look puzzling. _If I slept with the man, would he want to know the details?_

            “He kissed me and left,” Juliana says resolutely as her cheeks continue to burn. There is nothing to be embarrassed about, nothing too sensitive to tell. Nothing happened after all, and even if something did happen this was her goal, her mission. She was supposed to seduce the man. It was her job.

           “I do not think he is ready to abandon his former life,” she tells him and adds, “just yet.”

            “Just yet,” he echoes her words and smirks slightly in approval. “Thank you, Juliana.”

            She nods. She wanted him to be pleased. She wanted him to be proud and he is but she finds she draws little pleasure from it. Standing up she smiles a half-forced smile. _Foolish girl,_ _you just wanted to see him_ , she tells herself as if she were someone else, _and so you found a reason to do it_.

            “Thank _you_ ,” she tells him, suddenly wanting to get away and explain herself at the same time. “I hope you did not mind the intrusion, Obergruppenführer. I assumed you would want to know right away.”

            “Your assumption was correct,” is all he offers, the amused sneer fixed on his sharp, handsome face.

            She turns to leave but before she reaches the door the sound of his voice forces her to stop.

            “Juliana?” His face suddenly turns serious.

            _I shouldn’t care,_ she thinks. _Why do I care?_

            “Make sure to keep him close,” he says.

            She narrows her eyes, her heart unevenly pounding in her chest. “I will, sir.”

“Heil Hitler.”

“Heil Hitler.”

           

__________________________

  
 

The boy she has managed to seduce does not move in. Most days he does not even sleep over and when he does he seems perfectly content on the couch in her living room. His kisses grow more frequent, more urgent, but he has drawn a line for himself that he does not cross no matter how his body might urge him. Sometimes it is enough for him to go to another room. Sometimes he storms out of the apartment and does not come back for days. It would seem odd to her had she not known that he was broken, had she not known that he blames himself for the death of a child he had not caused.

            She feels like a monster for recovering so soon. She feels like a monster because she forgot too quickly. She cannot grieve the way he does, the role she plays is not entitled to it, but she does not grieve at all.

 _Am I like Smith and the others?_ , she wonders one night, as she stares at white celling in her bedroom. _Am I_ _an empty shell void of any trace of morality?_

            Despite the lack of news, she continues to call Smith once a week. She tells herself she does not care for the man and a part of her truly believes it even if her heart rate continues to quicken every time he says her name.

To her dismay the calls bring her comfort. They give meaning to the sham of normality their society calls life. She and Joe are not an ordinary couple formed from terrible circumstances. They are not really a couple at all. She is a spy, an agent, and he is her subject.

 

__________________________

 

Five weeks have passed since he appeared on her doorstep and apologized. Five weeks. They start to build their daily lives around each other. She does the grocery shopping now; he cooks. They walk the dog together. Go to the movies. Most of the time they talk but she cannot tell if either of them truly listens. She wants it to be like it was with Frank, she wants to care how his day was, but the more they settle into this bland routine the less she is interested in what he actually says. She can pretend, she has pretended all her life, but she is getting tired and her mind wonders to those celluloid images she’s seen in her attic. Images of a better world. One where she would not have to pretend, where everyone would be—if not happy then at least free.

            When Joe comes to her place that evening, he goes straight to the kitchen. He opens a bottle of beer. It makes a fresh, fizzy sound and for a moment she considers going and opening one herself.

Feeling his gaze, she looks up from her book.  

            “What is it?”

            He leans against the counter, taking a gulp out of the golden liquid before he sets it aside.

            “The man I answer to invited us for dinner.”

            She raises her brows in surprise. “John Smith?”

            Joe nods.

            Her pulse quickens. She cannot tell if its because of dread or excitement. _This is some sort of sick test_ , she thinks. _It must be. Why else would he invite him—me! Smith has planned this. He has planned this and did not tell me._

            “Why?”

            “I don’t know,” he says uneasily. “He asked me what I was doing for the first Advent. I said I’ll spend it with you and then he asked if we would like to join them for a festive family dinner. He is not someone you say no to.”

            She forces a smile and proclaims enthusiastically: “Of course not! I am sure it’s going to be lovely.”

            He narrows his eyes. “You are pleased?”

            She shrugs. “It’s a dinner. And I always wondered where the most important Nazi on this continent lives.”

            Joe laughs in relief.

            “What?”

            “I don’t know. I thought you might be upset.”

            “Why?”

            “You don’t seem to care much for the Party or the ideology. I didn’t think you’d be too pleased to go into the lion’s den.”

            She chuckles but makes sure to weigh her options carefully. She cannot pretend she is an ardent Nazi—if she was why would she safeguard the film for him? Why would she not want to tell people where she worked and what uniform she wears. On the other hand, she was supposed to force him to do the _right_ thing and right things are only those deemed so by Nazi Party. She was supposed to convince him to return the film, to stay in the SS, to do whatever Smith had in store for him.

            “I was raised by the Party,” she tells him, suppressing the urge to point to her high school diploma hanging on her wall. “I work for the Party. I live within the Party. The Party is the system we operate in; it is a medium, a natural order of things. It does not require care or love, it requires compliance.”

            He narrows his eyes, thinking over her words. “You should have been a politician,” he says then as he kisses her on her brow.

            “Maybe,” she smirks playfully. “Too bad I was a women first,” she adds, not trying to disclose her bitterness.

 

__________________________

 

 

Her hands sweat. The one thing that still gives her away. She has learned how to control her breath, relax her face, but her hands still sweat whenever she is nervous _—_ whenever she lies and thinks she might get caught.

            “We’re here,” Joe tells her as he parks the car in front of a relatively small white family house. She expected a mansion built in that brutal new-classicist style with tall, straight roman columns carved out of white marble and hearths with orange glowing flames. Instead she is confronted with a house that any upper-middle class family with taste could afford.

            _He wants to be the man of the people_ , she thinks as Joe helps her out her seat. _Maybe he is_. The records the resistance provided her assumed he turned to fascism after the Great Depression. Like so many others, he and his family were well off before the Black Tuesday, not so much after. In the end it all fits. In the U.S. there is no need or classical megalomania. Not after their palingenesis—their national rebirth in which the classicist capitol was turned into a heap of ashes and the progressive has finally risen. An image of today, that’s what the house represents—the triviality of mass capitalism. A washing machine for everyone, as long as you earn enough and go to the Party meetings as prescribed.

            She clenches the stems of tulips she carries hard enough to crush them. Joe rings the bell. They wait. A few seconds later a teenage boy, Thomas, greets them and lets them in.

            “They’re here, mom!” he yells, and an elegant looking woman emerges from what Juliana assumes must be the kitchen. Dressed in a dark red evening dress, she is the image of casual grace and beauty.

            “Welcome!” she greets them, her voice deep but melodic. “It’s so good to see you again, Joe! I am so happy John had this idea.”

            “Helen,” he smiles, and Juliana follows his suit. _Helen_ , she thinks, of course, _the daughter of Zeus and Leda, the most charming woman on earth._ “Thank you for the invitation,” Joe continues, somewhat awkwardly standing in the doorframe. “This is Juliana,” he signals as he moves out of the way to let the boy close the door.

            “Of course, it’s so nice to meet you, Juliana,” the woman smiles as she squeezes her hand tightly. “John told me Joe talks about nothing else but you lately.”

Juliana smiles, handing her the tulips. “That’s an exaggeration, I am sure.” She cannot help but like her. She is the perfect hostess, kind and attentive and yet there is something about her. Something different. Something smart. This woman does not only make you the cake of your life—she’ll poison you with it.

            “The pleasure is mine,” she says in response to Helen’s greeting.

            “Ah! There you are.”

            Juliana turns her head towards the dining room. It’s him, even though just like their meeting in the park she would not have recognized him if she didn’t know as much. He is no less pristine than usual but the lighter pans and a sweater show him as a mortal rather than the demigod air he carries when in the uniform.

            “Good evening, Joe,” he says shaking his hend. “Miss Crain,” he smiles. “I wonder, do you remember me?”

            Her eyes widen. _Remember him? What is trying to accomplish?_ She looks at Joe, measuring his puzzled expression.

            “Of course,” she says then with a shy smile. “Please forgive me, I did not expect you would recall our meeting.“

            “I met Miss Crain at a lecture once,” he says turning to Joe more than his wife. _She knows_ , Juliana realizes in that moment. _She knows everything_. “I was accompanying Reichsminister Speer that day and we both happened to linger in the room once everyone left.”

            “Indeed,” she agrees, blushing. “We had an interesting discussion about the meaning of architecture.”

            The conversation dies.

            She looks at her feet avoiding Smith’s gaze. Next to her, Joe uncomfortably shifts his weight.

            “Oh, please!” Helen says with a scolding gaze. Juliana exhales in relief. “Be seated! Thomas, John, show our guests into the dining hall. I’ll finish up the potatoes.”

            “Your wish is my command,” Smith smiles at his wife and signals with his hand towards the neatly set dinner table.

            “Thank you, Obergruppenführer,” Juliana says, perhaps a bit more sweetly than necessary.

            “This is my home, Juliana. It’s John,” he replies and if she didn’t know better she’d say he was teasing her.

 

__________________________

 

The conversation flows well enough. They talk about the holidays, traditions each of their families used to keep. When Smith— _John_ —asks her about architecture Joe diverts his attention to the children, teasing them about the _Weihnachtsmann_. He is upset, she knows, upset she did not tell him, but she couldn’t have known.

            After dinner she excuses herself, saying she needs a breath of fresh air. Outside, she lights a cigarette. _It’s going well_ , she tells herself, _it’s going well_. Closing her eyes she savors the night air, the freezing cold. She savors being alone, until the door creaks behind her and the owner of the house joins her in the garden.

            He takes out a cigarette; she hands him her lighter. Their fingers brush and she knows that this time it is no fault of hers.

            They stand in silence for a moment.

            “You should have told me,” she tells him, looking ahead.

            “Why?”

            Quietly, she chuckles. “When Joe told me you invited us, I thought it was a test. I thought you were testing me for whatever reason. But this was not about me—or at least not in the way I thought.”

            He blows out a small cloud of smoke that smoothly melts into the cold night air.

            “Would you have passed, if I was testing you?”

            She looks at him. “You should ask your wife.” She gives him a moment to consider this. “All considering, she might be a better judge of my sham than myself.”

            “You _would_ pass,” he says, grinning a little.

            Her stomach flutters. She ignores it.

            “What of this visit then?”

            He stubs out his cigarette and moves towards the door. “You’ll know soon enough,” he says. “The coffee is ready.”

            She nods but does not follow him. _Soon enough_ , she thinks and looks at Joe through one of the window panes. He is sitting one the floor playing with the two little girls. They are building something from wooden bricks, pilling them until the structure collapses under its weight. He laughs as the girls scream in childish panic before looking up. Seeing her watch him, he waves.

            She waves back.

She smiles as she realizes the meaning behind all of this. He is Reichsminister Heusmann’s only remaining offspring and Smith has decided it’s time to move the pieces on the board. He is sending him to Berlin and she’ll act as his gage should anything go wrong.


	7. Crash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Algonquin Hotel is a real place, just as Otto Ambors (1901-1990) is an actual figure, who worked for IG Farben and was charged in the aftermath of the Second World War for crimes against humanity. Der Stürmer was an actual Nazi tabloid. The two sentences about "loving" are largely Emil Cioran's words. 
> 
> I would like to thank my amazing beta-reader Ana_Khouri, because she had a lot of work with this chapter and improved it immensely and as always, thank you all for the amazing feedback.

_"You can love a monster, it can even love you back, but that doesn’t change its nature."_

Eliza Crewe

* * *

 

 

He does not pick her up this time. Not at the usual spot anyways. She goes to the train station, sits down. When she sees him pass, she follows him. He settles in a busy café in front of the Grand Central Station and pretends to read the papers—some cheap local version of the _Der Stürmer_. Her quick azure eyes assess the situation. She goes to the bathroom. When she returns, she sits at the table next to him.

            “What the hell, George?” she murmurs to her menu, her voice leveled.

            He does not turn his head—does not acknowledge her. Not for a while at least. “I could ask you the same thing,” he whispers in the end, irritated.

            She leans into her chair scanning the dessert offers. Perhaps she should order a cheesecake, or maybe an espresso will do?

            “He lives in a middle-class white house in Scarsdale, but I don’t need to tell you that, do I?” she says then, almost absently.

            She sees him clench his jaw from the corner of his eye. She was right then, he knew and erased it from the file he gave her. She is angry, angry that no one trusts her—not even the people for whom she once believed she was willing to die.

            “What did he tell you?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Juliana, stop playing games,” he spits out angrily.

It’s then that she decides that she will get the whole dessert—just to spite him. She signals to the waiter, smiling self-assured smile. “I am not playing any games. Prying isn’t what will get him to open up and he is warming up to me, George. He is starting to trust me.”

The waiter comes, she orders. When he leaves, George growls.

Hundreds of people—passengers—move around them in quick motion without paying attention to anything but themselves.

            She dares to face him, her eyes burning with sudden intensity. “He is starting to _like_ me, George. I am not going to ruin an opportunity like that for one of your stupid games.”

            He stares at her, his cover act all but forgotten. “And you, Juliana?” he says, his voice rough. “Are you starting to like _him_?”

            She hesitates. _I am starting to like him more than I like you_ , she thinks, before saying: “Don’t be ridiculous.”

            Focusing on the news section, he laughs huffs out a strangled breath.

The cheesecake arrives but the smooth white texture revolts her now. She wants to leave. She wants to leave, _now_.

            “We are afraid you’re going rogue, Juliana,” he says and there is a trace of disappointment in his voice.

            To her surprise, it hurts.

 _We_ , he said, but she knows, knows Susan thought she was rogue from the first moment on. _We_ really means _I_ and, despite it all, he is the only family she has left—even if he is no family of hers at all.

            “I am not going rogue, uncle,” she tells him, her voice strong and steady.

            He looks up. They both know she has not called him that in years.

            “Joe will be re-stationed to Berlin soon. There is something going on, what precisely I cannot say,” she says then.

            George nods. “If he goes, what will become of you?”

            “I stay where I am.”

            “Are you sure?”

            She smiles a cunning smile. “Yes.”

            “How do you know?”

            Standing up, she puts some money next to the untouched pastry. “Because I did my job right,” she says.

            He stares at her, puzzled.

            “I told you before,” she smiles a cold smile, “he _likes_ me.”

_I know he has watched the film._

 

__________________________

 

Two weeks before Christmas, Joe takes her out on a date. Not long ago he made the move—conquered his ghosts. He led her into her bedroom and closed the door. She cannot deny she enjoys the physical side of the act. She likes the way her thoughts are consumed by the infinite darkness—pure, absent, and visionless. Here and now. Darkness without end, without borders, darkness that is the only true depiction of the void she carries within herself. But even the love marks on her neck and breast that she now wears as reminder of his breach does not make her fall in love him, or even desire him. She has built a wall of lies around her mind he can never conquer, no matter what happens to her body.

The restaurant he chose is small, offering what she assumes is an imitation of Italian cuisine. The windows are decorated with festive chains, red and glittery. In the corner, there is a small, tilted Christmas tree made out of cheap plastic. The table, covered in a red and white tablecloth, rocks due to an uneven leg. It’s tasteless and yet utterly charming in its own way. It has character, a story—something the imitation of Michelangelo’s David in Smith’s office will never have.

She orders her meal, he does the same, and then he asks for a bottle of wine and a scotch. He downs the latter in one gulp the moment it arrives. She narrows her eyes. He seemed preoccupied before but now she knows why he brought them here. There is a certain amount of doubt, of course. There always is. What if she got it wrong? What if Berlin is not the answer after all.

            “I have some news,” he tells her.

            She gives him an encouraging nod.

            “I—,” he starts, but only chuckles desperately. “They are sending me to Berlin. A man, my father, who has not been interested in me for decades, wants to see me.”

            Raising her eyebrows she pretends to be surprised. The she clasps her hands in excitement. “That is wonderful, Joe! You’ll get to go to Europe!”

            “No!” he shakes his head in dismay. “You don’t understand. I am going for an undetermined period. My father, he is not just my father, he is an important man. He—gosh—my father is Martin Heusmann, the Reichminister.”

            She stares at him for a moment, then laughs in an odd sort of way. “Even better! Such an amazing opportunity!” Her words sound staged. She wants them to. “Aren’t you happy?”

            He scans her face, puzzled. “I don’t know,” he tells her. “Besides, what does it mean for us?”

            _Us_ , she wonders, _what us?_

            “We’ll figure it out,” she says waving her hand and taking a sip of her wine.

            “I don’t—,” he starts again and leans forward to take her right hand into his. “I just—I feel like I brought all these things into your life you never asked for and now I am just going to leave and—,”

            “Shhh,” she hushes him.

Her face freezes and she clenches Joe’s hand in hers. In one of the apartments above the restaurant someone starts to play the piano. _He is a good man_ , she thinks. A good man she has used, mistreated, and hurt and yet he is the one who feels the need to apologize. The faraway pianist presses the wrong key and for a moment the tune wavers, only to start from the beginning. _Maybe I am not like Smith after all_ , she thinks as her jaw weakens with unease. _Maybe I still have an ounce of humanity left_.

            “Joe,” she says, “do not blame yourself. There is no free will in this world. Not for people like you and me, at least. But in Berlin, knowing the right people, you might get a taste of it.” She cups his face in her hand. “Go to Berlin, Joe. Meet your father. Be free. Make a difference.”

            He shifts his weight and the table rocks from one side to the other spilling a portion of her wine.

            She looks away.

The music comes to a halt.

            He kisses the palm of her hand.

            “I—,” he starts, but then simply nods. He has no choice, both of them know as much. This conversation is just a common courtesy. It’s what people do to maintain the appearance of normality, the appearance of choice. “Thank you, Juliana,” he says finally. “Thank you, for everything.”

            She nods a silent nod, her eyes glazed, remembering the last time he said those words to her.

 _Oh Joe_ , she thinks, _God be with you in Berlin_.

 

__________________________

 

Joe packed his things and left for Berlin, leaving her with a naïve promise of returning. She smiled in understanding but made no promises of waiting. He’ll call, she knows. She is not sure if she’s going to pick up.

            She sits at her desk, organizing the some documents for tomorrow’s meeting. She shivers. Her feet grow cold lately—especially in the office.

            Mallory’s head appears from behind the door to his office. She smiles an honest smile.

            “Come in for a bit, would you, Juliana?”

            She nods, following him. He never calls her, never orders her around. She wonders why. Is it because he knows about her _other_ mission, or because he is truly a decent man?

            “Please sit.”

            She does, scanning the bare walls and shelves of his office. He never moved in properly, she realizes. He thought this arrangement was temporary—maybe he still does.

            “There is a Christmas Party tonight at the IG-Farben Headquarters here in New York. My wife is sick of these, but, as I am the intermediary between them and well, the state, I still have to go. Would you like to join me?”

            She tilts her head. “Ms. Mallory really does not care for these events? I hear they are usually quite splendid.”

            “If you’d ever been to one you would understand,” he laughs. “I hate these things myself. You are either bored to death or you want to punch the useless idiot who is trying to make conversation with you and, as a lady, you are constantly being harassed to dance by sleazy men with bad hair so they have an excuse to touch you.”

            She glares at him, amusement playing in her eyes.

            “If it’s so much fun, why would I want to go?”

            “To make my life bearable?” he says with a surprising honestly. It makes her laugh out loud.

            “Very well, Brigadeführer. I’ll join you in this torture of yours.”

           

__________________________

 

Not having an invitation of her own, she waits for him in front of the entrance. He had offered to pick her up; she declined it with a mocking smile. “Sir, you are making it look like a date,” she said and promised to meet him on site.

The event takes places at the Algonquin Hotel, a stunning landmark of New York City located in the Midtown Manhattan. It was once a beloved meeting place of writers and free thinkers, especially in the turbulent aftermath of the First World War. Now nothing more than a posh destination for the fascist elite, which seemed to have robbed it of all of its creative value.

Lighting up a cigarette, Juliana looks up at the elegantly crafted façade made out of red and white stone combined by four rows of black wood alcoves lit by the dim yellow lights. _No wonder they did not demolish it_ , she thinks, as she studies the elegant architecture, _the poor architect happened to style the structure in their colors._

            It takes about a quarter of an hour before Mallory arrives with an apologetic expression.

            “I am sorry you had to wait in the cold.”

            She shrugs. “I don’t mind. This coat needed some air anyway.”

            He looks her up and down, then smiles. “Muskrat?”

            “A gift from my step-father,” she nods uneasily. She still remembers the day he gave her the coat. “You are a lady now,” he said, but she did not feel like one. She felt like crying.

They walk in. The muted jazz-like music from the grand hall flows through the open door into the foyer. Juliana gives up her fur as he gives up his coat. She stares at his attire, bewildered. He chose not to wear his uniform, the only reminder of his affiliation being the red and white striped armband displaying the crooked shape of the swastika.

            Catching the puzzlement in her eyes, he makes an apologetic hand gesture and shrugs his shoulders.

            “I told you I was an chemist. Besides, I am old, and that thing strangles me all the time.”

            Juliana smirks, thanking the universe Smith has forced this man to transfer on her behalf and not someone else—someone devastatingly proper.

She allows him to lead her into the grand hall. The opulent space is covered in oak, velvet and gold, a yellow gleam soft light reflecting on the marble floors. The air is sweet with perfume and the thousands of flowers decorating the long tables on the sides. It is a vision of liquid wealth, gilded in stolen treasures. There is no ruler in this room but for the massive _Reichsadler_ hanging above the podium. _Did the American eagle also look at its people as prey_ , she wonders. _Did they fear his watchful eyes?_

            “That’s one of the members of the German Executive Board,” Mallory stops her, pointing to one of the men standing beside the podium, “Otto Ambros.” They begin to ascend the stairs. “I assume he is going to introduce the Director of the American section, Max Stanley. I am afraid you’ll have to meet them both.”

She nods absently, observing the crowd dressed in evening gowns, uniforms and tuxes. The people, the room, the event, it all sickened her—a shameless orgy of gluttony and greed void of meaning.

Mallory lets her linger for a while before signalling that they should move upstairs. It is only as they start to ascend the staircase that she spots John Smith. His face is alert and turned towards her. When their eyes meet she realizes he has been watching her for some time now, waiting for her to feel his gaze, to find him. She hesitates mid-stride, pausing awkwardly on the stair.

She did not expect him here. She should have.

The noise around her grows silent.

Her feet start to move again in an automatic fashion, but her eyes never leave his sharp face. There are men gathered around him, men who seem pitiful when standing within the aura he exudes. Absently biting her lower lip, she remembers the night all those months ago. The night when he paid her a late night visit and her flat was consumed darkness. The night she realized that the adrenaline rushing through her suddenly boiling blood wasn’t triggered by fear, but arousal.

She feels naked under his gaze—naked and exposed, but she cannot force herself to look away. Mallory says something to her, but his voice sounds muffled, she feels almost as if her head was swallowed up by water.

            She swallows, feeling her heart beating in her chest. Her gaze remains focused. The corner of Smith’s mouth twitches then, and his expression turns to blatant arrogance.

            The chatter of the room returns to her ears. She has resurfaced.

            “Juliana?”

            She jerks her head towards the man beside her.

            “Yes? Please forgive me, I was distracted.”

            Repeating his words, Mallory smiles a clandestine smile.

           

__________________________

 

She is indeed forced to meet them all: the sturdy and aging Otto Ambors with deadly pale eyes and no manners; the tall and soft-spoken Max Stanley, whose suit is one shade too light to be respectable and shyly asks her for a dance before pressing his card into her hand; as well as the plentiful members of the local IG-Farben Executive Board, with their polite smiles and common courtesies. It takes over an hour before Mallory turns to her and tells her to go and have fun.

            “Are you sure, Brigadeführer?”

            “I would hope so,” he says, smiling. “Besides, I have some business to attend to.”

            Not a friendly proposal then—a dismissal. She nods in understanding and takes her leave. Sipping her champagne, she drifts to the plentiful tables covered with white tablecloths and set with festively decorated plates of _Häppchen_.

Her eyes scan the crowd, mingling and dancing. She knows some people present. She met them during social activities when she was still in training. There is no one from her group, however. _Gefolge_ were hardly considered appropriate wives of the best men of the Greater Nazi Reich and would never receive an invitation to an event like this. They were too spirited, too engaged with the political life to be useful as housewives.

A woman in a dark green dress and white scarf catches her eye— _Helen._ For a moment she considers walking over to her and shaking her hand in greeting. Juliana likes the woman, respects her even, and yet, she cannot help but dismiss the thought as quickly as it comes.

 _Don’t lie if you don’t have to_.

            Instead, she examines the crowd around her.

            She is looking for him.

            “Bored already, Miss Crain?” Smith’s deep, velvet like voice comes from behind her.

            Her heart skips a beat.

            “I’ve been dismissed,” she deliberates carefully, as she traces the flute along her reddened lips.

            He stands beside her, close enough for them to touch if either of them would move an inch.

            Juliana dares to look at him—his handsome face focused on the subliminal movement of the crowd. She waits. It’s not her move to make.

            “Dance with me,” he says, hands in his pockets.

            It seems casual.

            It isn’t.

            The sentence somehow lacks the correct intonation to be a request.

            An image of his wife flashes in front of her eyes, his children. _What are you doing?_ She asks herself, but there is no time to ponder about her choices now.

            She nods and places her half empty champagne flute on a nearby table.

            He signals to her with his right hand to lead the way onto the dance floor as he bows ever so slightly, the sleeve of his black uniform rising high enough to reveal the silver swastika-shaped cufflinks.

            The music flows from the podium as a slim man in his fifties vocalizes one of the most famous Christmas ballads of the century—White Christmas.

            She feels him follow her, one step after another. Her knees tremble. In the midst of the slowly swaying crowed she turns, almost landing in his arms.

            He was closer than she expected, waiting.

            His right hand settles in the arch of her back, his left hand finds hers. The contact of his calloused skin sends a shiver down her spine. They’ve never touched, not properly and while he came close to her as he cornered her in her kitchen, he made sure to maintain space between them.

            They move.

            Back, right, forward, back, right, forward.

            “Breathe, Juliana,” he says into he ear and she feels herself exhale a breath she did not realize she was holding.

            “Forgive me,” she whispers. “I have not danced in a while.”

            He smiles a knowing smile, as if he was aware of her blatant lie.

            “Dancing wasn’t in the training program of the SS units?”

            “No, but killing was,” she tells him, her voice flat.

            She feels his thumb stroke over her knuckles.

            “Why did you asked me to dance?” she asks then. “I haven’t seen you dancing.”

            “Maybe I danced when you weren’t watching.”

 _I am always watching_ , she wants to say. She doesn’t. Instead, she shakes her head. “You don’t seem to be one who would enjoy dancing.”

            When he does not reply, she gambles. “You despise this, _all_ of this. You think it is a waste of your valuable time,” she points out, her lips nearly brushing the lobe of his ear. “You act when others talk—that’s why the men in Berlin keep you around. Besides,” she smiles then, playfully, “this closeness is dangerous.” She feels her heart beating in her throat. “I could stab you.”

            He looks down at her. “If you did, you would die.”

            “If I did,” she says, her azure eyes dark. “I wouldn’t care.”

            He grins.

            “Perhaps I _wanted_ to dance.”

            She raises one of her eyebrows.

            Before he can react, the song comes to what seems to her as an abrupt finish underlined with crescendo. The audience and dancers start to clap. He steps aside, letting his right hand slowly slide down the back of her slim black dress before breaking the contact.

            Her jaw tightens.

            “It was a pleasure,” he tells her, before bowing his head slightly and walking off into the crowd.

            He looks after him. “The pleasure was all mine,” she whispers to herself, echoing the conversation they had upon their first meeting.

 

__________________________

 

 

At the end of the social gathering, Mallory offers to drive her home and she does not have a reason to refuse. They settle into the car and she has to fight so that the rhythmic sound of the motor does not lull her to sleep. Outside, the air is frozen; the stars don’t shimmer, but stand as cold steady lights in the distance.

            “May I ask you something personal?” Mallory’s voice breaks the silence.

            She turns her head to the older man and, because she is too tired to be taken aback, she nods.

            “Are you having an affair with John?”

            Her eyes widen as her mouth falls agape. “I—,” she starts, but realizes she does not know what to say.

 _No_ , she thinks. _No, I’m not_. It is as simple as that, but…

“You don’t have to—“ Mallory says before he is cut off by the firmness of her voice.

            “I’d like to.”

The cold and silence of the night makes her words linger.

            Averting his gaze from the road in front of them, Mallory’s usually warm eyes fall on her face in bewilderment. _He did not expect me to tell the truth_ , she thinks, as she scans his wrinkled face.

            She chuckles—the sound short and pathetic.

“It doesn’t matter. He will never have me.”

            Something in Mallory’s face shifts and the initial astonishment turns into an expression of kindhearted sympathy.

            “Why not?”

            She wants to laugh again. She doesn’t.

            “He loves his wife,” she says and believes it. “It’s hard not to see that.”

            The older man nods. “Yes,” he agrees as he returns his gaze to the road. “Yes, he does love Helen, but that doesn’t mean much.”

            She considers his words, unsure if they are meant to be a comfort or a dismissal of the society in which they were both reluctant participants. The night air trapped within the metal construction of the small car cools as a wall of pine trees rises on the right side of the road.

            When she doesn’t say anything, he continues.

            “I have known John and Helen for many years, Juliana. I assure you, John loves his family above all. He would risk everything in order to protect them, but there is something in the way he looks at you—something fierce.”  

            “Fierce?” She echoes, a traitorous fire sparking in her gut.

            The man nods.

“Why are you telling me this?” she asks in puzzlement. Why subvert the John’s family, even if only subtly?

            Her question is met with a long moment of silence, then a sigh.

“It’s true that my wife doesn’t care for these parties but that is not why she isn’t here, Juliana. He asked for you.”

            She looks at him, admittedly shocked. His eyes remain on the asphalt road in front.

“This world isn’t pretty, Juliana,” he tells her and she hears herself swallow more than she feels it. _He asked for me? Why?_ _Why didn’t I see this? I should have seen this. But why would he ask for me?_

“There is not much enjoyment to be had in this system,” Mallory says after a moment of silence, his tone resigned. “It is filled with misery and pain; and if a man escapes these, boredom lies in wait for him at every corner. We are all dead inside—we have to be in order to survive, but not you. Somehow, _you_ are still alive.” He looks into her sparkling eyes as if to reassure himself once more that what he says is true. His old lips curve into a sad smile. “And John?” he continues, “I like to believe there is still hope for him—you might be exactly what he needs; an adventure, a step out of the ordinary.” He looks “It is evil that generally has the upper hand here, but folly makes the most noise… perhaps it is time for John to hear some music, at least for a while.”

            She blinks in disbelief and wonder. This is not how dedicated members of the Party should talk to one another.

This is different.

This is poetry.

This is treason.

 _Does he know?_ She wonders. _Does he know I am not one of them? Is he? Who is Mallory, really?_ She never asked herself that question before. Never inquired into his background. He said he was a chemist, but—

            The car comes to a halt. They have arrived in front of her apartment. She looks into the night spreading around her. She wants to say something, but words desert her. “Thank you,” is all she manages in the end. Her voice is low, she is grateful it does not shake _. Thank you_ , she thinks, _for the ride, or the talk, for whatever you decide._

When she leaves the car, it is without goodbye. Outside she feels her body shiver, not with cold but uncertainty, dread and unrecognized emotion. Slowly she walks towards the entrance door. _He asked for me_ , she thinks. When she hears the car speed away, she stops and, closing her eyes, breathes in the freezing air. _He asked for me_. There are leaves rustling in the distance. She laughs loudly, the sound is joyous and desperate at the same time.

            “I am alive,” she whispers into the darkness. “And I shall die that way as well.”  

 

__________________________

 

 

Two days later, she receives a coded message in her post. She sits down, holding the writing in her hand.

            George has never done anything like this—he never would. _It’s Susan_ , Juliana realizes. _Susan has sent this, because George doesn’t know._

            She looks at her phone, debating if she should call him and tell him Susan is acting behind his back.

            In the end she simply decodes the message—seemingly a sweet little postcard from Florida.

            The result is another code: Psalms 8:2. She laughs, bitterly. The resistance made her memorize long passages from the Holy Book when she was a child. Her stepmother was against it, but the woman insisted. “No one knows the Bible nowadays,” she told her. “It’s even forbidden to own one, darling. It’s the perfect code—if the girl remembers.”

Juliana liked reading the Bible. She hated memorizing it, considering it pointless.

            Closing her eyes, she tries to remember.

            She doesn’t.

            She considers going to the black market. You can still buy Bibles when you know where to go. People have them at home, hidden away. Sometimes they sell them.

            It’s a risk of course, risk she should not have to take. But she can’t ask George and contacting Susan would be a suicide.

            She’ll buy a Bible.

            She’ll buy it soon.

           

__________________________

 

            Christmas comes and goes. She does not celebrate it. It makes little sense being home alone and she is not very keen on spending the Christmas eve with her stepparents. They ask questions—questions she is not willing to answer. In the end she simply asks to work and the Headquarters concedes. They are always short of staff during the official Holidays anyway.

            “Juliana?”

            She raises her head from her typewriter, her fingers mindlessly finishing the word she was writing. “Yes?”

            “There is another—,” Mallory shifts uncomfortably. “There is another, terribly boring and lengthy event at the end of the week.”

            Juliana nods in understanding. “My presence has been requested.”

            Mallory smiles a small smile, but it lingers, his warm, brown eyes measuring her face.

            “I won’t tell him, sir.”

            He nods, relieved.

            They say no more.

 

__________________________

 

She dresses in red. She won’t be the only one, she knows, not during the winter season, but she wants to be daring even if the challenge is only subtle.

 _What is his plan_ , she wonders then. If this is about her—her as a woman, why play these charades?

She arrives before Mallory and leaves only an hour and a half later with an apologetic smile.

John Smith does not show.

 

__________________________

 

 

Juliana walks into her apartment and locks the door, absently turning the key in its narrow slot. When she reaches for the switch, a heavy smell of fresh cigarette smoke hits her nose.

            Something’s wrong.

            She hits the switch.

There is no light.

            She lets her hand slide from the switch before pressing her back to the wall.

            “You planned this,” she says in disbelief, kicking off her shoes. A sudden thrill of excitement sizes her body.

            There is a moment of silence.

            “I do not care for recklessness.”

His deep, velvet voice stirs up the still air. The pungent smell of the smoke grows in intensity.

            She moves towards the living room, her fingers tracing the wall.

            He is seated in her armchair, the shadows playing across his face. He has loosed his tie, unbuttoned the collar of his stiff shirt. The jacket is off, lying folded over her coach. His posture is that of a perfectly carved statue.

            “You have a strange way of seducing a girl,” she tells him, her voice void of emotion, first you stand her up, then you break into her apartment.”

            Narrowing his eyes, the corner of his lips twitch into a small smile.

            “You do not need seducing.”

The dim glow of the street lamps throws tall black shadows on the roughcast furniture of her kitchenette.

She takes a step towards him, her feet cold where the linoleum floor meets the threadbare carpet.

            “Why the party, then?”

            He rises to his feet and she feels defeated—her mock defiance exposed as a cheap circus trick. It’s not his height that intimidates her, but the broadness of his shoulders. It is the aura of untouchability of a man without pathos, who walked on the ruins of the previous era and modeled himself on the forms of his time.

            “I did not want to break in unannounced.”

He is towering above her; the room grows small, suffocating.

            “You knew what this was about,” he tells her then and she feels herself swallow, her throat dry. “You went expecting us to find ourselves here, at this exact spot. _You_ planned it just as I did. I only cut the risks.”

            Juliana does not deny the accusation. She tries to laugh instead, but the sound dies in her throat.

            He shouldn’t be here.

            She shouldn’t be doing this. Standing this close. Wanting to touch him.

She forces herself to look up from the rhythmic movements of his chest. Something cajoles deep within her.

She is terrified, terrified of what she might do, what she will do if she forgets who he truly is.

An enemy.

Loving, we do not examine love; acting, we do not meditate upon action. If you study your neighbor, it is because he ceased to be your neighbor, if you study yourself, you are no longer yourself. If you make love to your enemy—is he still your enemy?

            His face is the image of stillness, calm in a withered storm, but his eyes turn steel and dance with feline amusement.

They lock with hers, only to proceed to trace her lips.

            She feels herself tremble, breathless.

            He doesn’t move.

            She blinks. _He won’t touch me_ , she realizes. _He won’t touch me unless I touch him first_.

            It is not a game, not a seduction technique. It is a gentleman’s choice, or at least the illusion of one. Would he go, if she changed her mind? Would he leave her alone?

            She will never know.

            Juliana steps forward, pressing her lips against his. The movement is gentle, soft, calculated. She slides her arms along his shoulders, finding the curve of his neck.

            His right hand moves to her side, gently pressing her against him.

            Encouraged by his response, she opens her mouth for him and feels his tongue slip in.

He tastes like smoke and brandy.

He tastes like power.

            A moan escapes her throat and the sound tears apart whatever moral restraint seemed to have held him back.

            Lifting her up in one smooth movement he places her on the kitchen counter, deepening the kiss.

            The aberrant gentleness of the moment is gone.

            Feeling him harden against her, she wraps her legs around him forcing him closer. Obliging, he leaves her mouth to explore her neck with the newly found aggressiveness, dragging his teeth down her smooth skin as his hands sliding along her legs move up the silk fabric of her long dress.

            Her back arches under his touch. The top of her dress slips down her shoulders and his hands finish what gravity has started.

            She is bare in front of him. Lit from the waist up by the dim electric light coming in from the street.

            He takes a moment to survey her before he lowers his mouth to her breast.

            She groans, her fingers dropping into his hair as she uses the other hand to try to steady herself.

            She hears him let out a low laugh.

            “Uncomfortable?” he asks, looking up unconcerned.

            With his ruffled hair and wrinkled white shirt, he seems younger, an impeccable romantic graced with the dark magic of a charlatan.

            “I own a bed,” she states simply, breathing quicker than she would like.

            “Hmmm,” he grins, reclaiming her mouth as he pins her to the counter.

            If she was thinking straight she might try to undress him, try to equalize them. But she does not care what he does as far as it gives her pleasure.

            She bites his lower lip instead. The gesture provokes him. He robs her of her security, moving her to the edge.

            Her hands grip on his shirt.

            His hands move back to her legs, caressing the inside of both thighs with his thumbs before moving to her hip. He hooks her underwear with deft fingers and her arms wrap around his neck as he lifts her for a moment to slide them off before returning her to the counter.

She shivers at the exposure and is flooded by a primal need to feel his skin against hers. Her hands move back to his shirt and she starts unbuttoning it as his fingers slip inside her. She sucks in a breath, gripping partly onto the counter, partly onto him as his fingers find a rhythm. She looks up to find him watching her intently, his eyes holding both brutal desire and disciplined restraint as she realizes that he is doing this for her.

He wants her to enjoy this.

            She holds his eyes as his fingers move inside her—focused and efficient. His thumb brushes her clitoris and she lets out a small whimper, trying to maintain her gaze but failing—knowing he is still watching her with that same intensity as her climax builds inside her.

She breaks, collapsing onto him as she tightens around his fingers in a sudden spasm.

She breathes heavily, but his fingers maintain their movement.

 _Now_ , she thinks, _I want him inside me, now._

Letting go of the counter, her hand finds his chin. The movement is clumsy, impulsive, her palm moist with sweat.

            “Stop playing,” she groans.

Smirking, he jerks his head away from her hand so that she almost loses balance. His fingers thrust deeper, ignoring her command, and soon she is gasping again as he sends her over the edge once more. She is limp with pleasure now.

            He collects her in his arms, placing her on top of her covers. The remnants of her dress are lost somewhere in the corridor. She lies in front of him now, fully naked, but she has no incentive to cover herself.

            He lowers himself on top of her, arched on his elbows and they both gasp as the length of him covered with layers of fabric touches her entrance.

            She moves against him, teasing him, and the sound he lets out sounds too raw to be human.

            She works on the buttons of his shirt. She would tear them apart if she knew he would not need the shirt in the morning.

            He takes it off, throwing it on the ground. She touches his broad chest then, feeling it. There is a mark from a bullet on the right, an old scar. _Was it the men he works for now who did this to him?_ She wonders and without a second thought she kisses it.

He stands up and she momentarily panics, before realizing he is taking off his shoes.

            She sighs in relief.

            He snorts.

            “I wouldn’t leave with a job half done.”

            She laughs.

            He takes off his pants but before he can turn back to her, she gets up and stands in front of him, looking down with a cunning smile.

            “My turn,” she says pushing him onto the bed. He moves because he wants to, she knows, it takes two to play this game.

            She climbs on top of him, teasing him with her hands at first but he is too far-gone to do anything else but guide him inside her. They groan, and for the first time during the act, she sees him close his eyes.

 

__________________________

 

She expected him to leave—dress, pack his things and disappear into the night, but when she wakes in the middle of the night he is there, lying next to her.

She observes him then, the peacefulness of his face sunken into her big white pillow.

            They had both come twice in union before they reached their limit and she fell asleep despite her promise to herself not to.

            She scolds herself for it now.

This arrangement is built on an unspoken agreement after all. One that she thought he wouldn’t keep.

            She moves from her belly to her side. The movement wakes him; he looks at her, his hazel eyes lazy from sleep. She wants to say something, something kind, but finds there is nothing she can say without sounding ridiculous.

            So she says something else instead. Something she can only ever ask in the darkness of her rooms where no hidden microphone can hear.

            “Do you ever think about the film?”

            He blinks, his forehead wrinkling.

            It feels like eternity before he answers.

            “Sometimes,” he says, rolling on his back.

            She should stop then.

            She doesn’t.

            “Do you think it’s real?”

She has no ulterior motive. She is simply curious.

            “No.”

            The answer comes a second too fast to be credible, but she does not question it. She does not question _him_ , not in this moment.

            He reaches for a cigarette and offers her one.

            She refuses. They lie in silence, neither of them moving to touch the other.

__________________________

 

The beams of the early morning sun stir her awake. She turns to the other side of the bed. It’s empty, cold to touch.

            She rises, putting on her robe she moves into the kitchen only to stop dead in the doorway.

            She thought he was gone, that he had disappeared as expected when she fell asleep again. Instead he is fully dressed, sitting at her small kitchen desk. Boots, jacket, the iron cross, the whole uniform clings neatly to his body as if he had never taken it off.

His sharp face is stern, his eyes that of a hawk. When he speaks, his voice is cold.

            “Sit down, Juliana.”


	8. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, *the talk* is finally here. There are no references to actual things here as this chapter is mostly plot and character based, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback on the last chapter! I had a lot of fun reading those comments!

_ “But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave." _

Milan Kundera

 

* * *

 

_Sit down, Juliana._

The words echo in her head as she stares at him—his high cheekbones sharpened by the rising sun coming though the small east-faced windows.

_Sit down, Juliana._

She feels cold and empty. She feels like an utter fool.

_Sit down, Juliana._

How much does he now? How much and for how long?

Slowly, she sits down, her eyes never leaving his. She thinks of the knives stored away in her upper drawer, her mind carefully calculating her chances in hand-to-hand combat.

He is taller than she is, heavier and well trained. He will assume her every move. They’ve been trained and re-trained by the same men, after all. If she attacks him, she will die and she will die alone.

Her gaze moves to the knife-filled drawer then, lingering, as if to bid the hopeless option goodbye.

Following her eyes, he smiles a unsympathetic smile.

She looks at him, scanning his face. There is no menace in his features, no cruelty, no hatred. There is nothing but that informed correctness of an official behind the interrogation desk.

“You searched my flat,” she says, interpreting his gaze.

“I _had_ it searched,” he replies, dispassionately.

She would’ve laughed if her heart weren’t trapped in her throat along with her stomach. She thought last night was a folly on his part as well, little did she know.

_Calculating bastard_.

But what if this is about something else? What if he doesn’t know her two-sided game after all?

One look into his cold eyes convinces her otherwise.

“You knew,” she states with sour irony, and her fingers curl inside her fists. _You knew all along and slept with me anyway_ , she thinks.

He gives her a small nod in reply.

It irritates her.

She is calm, her posture is forcibly relaxed, but even she can feel the feverish rage burning in her azure eyes.

“Why?”

It is a simple enough question. One that should yield a simple enough answer—an answer she knows she does not really want to hear.

“I had to know if I could trust you.”

_A half-truth._

“I see,” she laughs then, humorlessly, the sun rays forcing her to close and reopen her eyes. “I hope your cock confirmed my reliability.”

He shifts uncomfortably and she calls it a personal victory. The black, pristine uniform, the stoic countenance—they could put him on one of those posters they so love to produce. With beautiful women in peasant clothes and strong, handsome men in uniforms staring off to the far distance towards a better future. These men and women protect the humble people of the Greater Nazi Reich from the evils and vices of the decadent scoundrels like herself.

She who sits in front of him with last night’s mascara smudged on her face, hair in disarray and her breast only half way covered by her robe.

“Do you have a cigarette?” she asks, as if to complete the colorful image she painted in her head.

He narrows his eyes, hesitating, before he reaches into his jacket for his silver cigarette box and sends it across to table.

She catches it in a swift motion, the thin fabric shifting on her body. She takes one out, lighting it slowly with a spare lighter neglected on the kitchen table. Inhaling the smoke and she lets it out with her mouth, all under his cold scrutinizing gaze.

It is a performance that takes all of her concentration and skill. In truth, she is terrified. He called her bluff; he must know she is bluffing now, doesn’t he? She wishes she knew what he was thinking; she wishes she could read him. She cannot, she realized that a long time ago, but there is one thing she knows—he wouldn’t be chatting with her if she were meant to end today with a bullet in her head.

“What do you want,” she asks, surprised at the steadiness of her own voice.

“Your cooperation.”

She smiles a cocky smile, the gesture too flat to be real.

“How much do you know?”

He tilts his head, his expression almost irked. “Juliana,” he says with a warning in his voice.

“I am a spy,” she tells him then, mockingly. She might as well tell him everything—everything of no consequence, everything he probably already knows, just to annoy him. “Not because I chose it, but because I was raised as one. I was an orphan, as you know, my stepparents received my custody as part of a deal. They, and the Resistance, would raise me for what had been a yet undetermined mission. They agreed, as my stepfather’s infertility prevented them from ever having any children of their own. I was an excellent member of the Party most of my life; you’ve seen my records, so much so the Resistance operatives had hard time trusting me, they still do. My stay in the Pacific States was un-planned. The Party sent me, I went.”

She pauses, killing her cigarette in her ashtray.

“I’ve known I was meant to kill you, or another man in your position, since I was fourteen. I knew I would die completing that task. That was my mission. When you asked for me couple of months ago, the orders changed. I was close to you, closer they ever thought I would get. They thought you would be more useful alive than dead. They told me to befriend you.” She laughs then, grimly. “They did not have to tell me that, I liked you enough to do that willingly.”

She wants him shift in his seat again. She wants to make him uncomfortable again. _No_. She wants to see the man she saw last night.

She wants to see him vulnerable, human.

But there is nothing, not even the light in the eyes of a predator watching his prey.

“You’ve been passing on information,” he says then in a low voice, throwing yellowish folder across the table.

He is done with her biography.

She stares at him before she reluctantly looks inside the folder. It contains photographs. It’s her, in different outfits, walking on a street, eating; it’s her as she is being picked up by that shabby van her uncle classes as a vehicle. There are several images of it, as well as of her and George conversing. There are photos from that café couple of weeks ago. All this time, someone followed her and she never noticed. She had been trained—she should have known, but in the end, _they_ were the ones who trained her and John knew that.

_Stupid._

“George Dixon is your contact,” Smith offers, almost casually. “Always has been.” She narrows her eyes when she hears her uncle’s name roll of his tongue. Part of her was hoping that this was the one piece of information he didn’t know. She was hoping she would be able to tell him false names, cover names. She was hoping she would be able play for time, but he knows more than she imagined.

“He’s one of the local operatives,” the sound of his voice vibrates in the room.

She thinks of her stepparents then. Her cheerful mother and her kind, intellectual father, who fled across the ocean to escape the disparaging storm that was breaking out in their _Vaterland_. They changed their ways, adopted a new name, all to fit in, but there was no escape. A decade later, the storm caught up with them and they resigned themselves to the new order with one last act of defiance—raising her.

They must be on their way to a concentration camp in the North, she realizes. Either that, or they are lying in their home, their bodies one bullet too heavy.

“What do you want?” she repeats then, and for the first time she hears her voice tremble.

A spark of some alien emotion fleshes across his sharp face, lingering in the muscles around his hazel eyes.

Her stomach turns in on itself. “Spit it out, John” she whispers tensely. “You want something, otherwise I’d be lying in my bed with my throat slit.”

His features harden. He passes her a blank paper and a pen. His movements are slow, as if she was a hurt animal he did not wanted to scare away. “I want you to write every name of a Resistance member you know. Every address of a hiding place, ever collaborator you might think of. I want you to tell me about the ways they communicate, and what they have in store.”

She stares at the paper. Would he torture her if she told him to fuck off or would he simply break her neck and get rid of her.

Taking the pen in her hand, she writes down Susan’s full name, the ink slowly permeating the paper. Crooked smile appears on her face. She does not know that is her actual name and she finds she does not really care. Then, she writes a name of the Resistance’s last hideout. They are no longer there, she knows _that_ , but he doesn’t and that’s what matters. She gives him other names, other addresses, both in New York and San Francisco, things that seem reliable, things that will lead him to naught.

She thinks about that postcard from Florida she burned. She thinks about the code. Maybe there is still a chance. She pushes the paper back to him.

“This is all I have,” she tells him. “You have to give me some time.”

He raises his eyebrows in a silent question.

“They don’t trust me, John,” she says. The use his name is deliberate, the rage in her voice is not. “They never have. Last time I talked to George he thought I was going rogue.”

“Last night was not an order.”

 She stares at him, not knowing if the sentence was meant as a question. When he doesn't specify, she shakes her head in resignation.

“No.” There was nothing in his profile to suggest she might be able to seduce him. _Nothing._ “Last night was careless,” she adds then, echoing his concerns from the previous night.

Her voice shakes as she admits her mistake, even to herself.

She has fallen for him. She cannot deny that any longer.

“I am a terrible spy. I’ve never tried to press you for information. I told myself that you didn’t trust me enough,” she tells him, trying to divert the conversation from a topic she is not willing to discuss. “The local operative—Susan—was convinced I was deliberately not telling them what you shared with me.”

There is a moment of silence.

“You could have told them about the film,” he tells her flatly.

“I didn’t,” she replies pointblank. _I would never tell them,_ she wants to cry. The movie was something private. Something they shared despite their orders, something utterly secret, something _theirs_.

He looks at her, and for the first time his expression changes to something more welcoming, something honest.

“I know,” he says, the words are no more than a whisper. She wants to ask how, wants to breach this newly recovered persona of his, but one look at his stern face makes her think better of it. The voice might have betrayed him; his mask does not.

“What now?”

He could still kill her, she realizes. He _should_ kill her. Nothing about the situation seems to suggest he will but she has being living on the edge for long enough to succumb to the narcissism that finds death hard to deal with. Maybe she thinks of it as a personal offense, believing nothingness has to announce itself before approaching. Perhaps, there is no sign before one dies, no rusty label with big bold letters saying: danger ahead, no flashing red light that blinks in front of one’s eyes as if to prepare one for darkness. Perhaps it’s just a second and then nil.

“Now,” he leans into the chair, hands folded in his lap. “Now, you’ll go and talk to your friends.”

“They’re not stupid,” she barks, almost loosing her temper. She has told him, they don’t trust her. “They won’t just come out when I whistle. I am a bloody spy, not an operative. I don’t call them, they call me.”

He nods, calmly. “That is exactly why you are going to tell them you have urgent information to pass onto them.”

“If you want me to spy on them for you, lying to them won’t get us off to a good start.”

“You won’t lie to them. What I am about to tell you is true.” There is a moment of almost theatrical silence before he adds: “The Führer is dead.”

She laughs in his face, the sound foul.

“He’s been dying for years!” Does he take her for a fool?

“Not anymore. He _is_ dead.”

There is sincerity in his voice. Her eyes widen.

The room grows silent.

She stares at him.

This was her signal; this was when she was supposed to put a bullet in his brain. She cannot do it. Not here, not now. More importantly, despite it all, she does not want to.

“You’re not lying,” she says, puzzled.

He shakes his head.

“Inform them.”

“Why? Why are you telling me this?”

“We know the Resistance has been waiting for this moment. There will be war, Juliana, and we cannot fight it on two fronts. It’s better to lure them out now than when the news is made public and war breaks out.”

 “So you told me for the good of the people? Is that what you think?”

“What either of us think is of no consequence,” he tells her in a low tone. “We all have a part to play in what is to come and this one is yours.”

“How much time do I have before it’s official? It’s difficult to make contact anyone during the holidays.”

“A week,” he says, standing up. “Maybe two.”

_Of course_ , she thinks, _the Führer dies on Epiphany_ _, what a lovely messianic message that is going to send, but…_

“Who is the—,” she stops herself mid-sentence. “It’s Heusmann, isn’t it?” She laughs, the sound hollow. “That’s why Joe needed to go to Berlin. You needed your man close to the new Chancellor.”

He glares at her in silence, then stands from the chair and starts moving to the door.

_Is this it? Is he just going to leave?_

“How long did you know?” The question is out before she thinks about asking it.

He stops, putting the cap on his head and turning. “That you were a spy?”

Unwillingly, she nods. She didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to show she cares.

“I always had my suspicions.” After a pause he adds, his voice like smooth, “the beginning.”

Her body shivers.

“Why choose me then—if you knew all along?” She asks, her voice trembling with frustration. “Why not just kill me instead of making me work for you? Why put yourself in danger?”

“I was never in any danger, Juliana,” he tells her, his eyes sliding to the kitchenette.

She feels herself swallow.

“I needed Joe loyal to the Party. I needed him to go to Berlin and I knew you would get the job done.”

“Anyone could.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “You could.”

They look at each other for a long moment before he speaks. There is a sudden softness in his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you, Juliana,” he tells her and to her surprise, she believes him. “Please, don’t force me to.”

He leaves then, without another look, without telling her to carry on as she did before, without instructions. They will come later, she knows. Or they would, if they ever reached that stage.

It will take him about two days before he figures out that what she has given him is mostly useless, but with a bit of luck, he’ll be dead before then.

 

__________________________

 

The door slams shut. She remains at her table, listening to the steady sound of silence, longing for a sound. She never imagined silence to be this terrible. She considers crying out, creating the sound she yearns for, but there would be no echo - only the mental memory of her voice and she cares little for that.

She does not move, not until the electricity sets back in and her throat chokes on the stiff warm air. Her body slides on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. Her eyes fill with tears and she is forced to bite into her arm to silence it the sobs forcing themselves out of her depths.

The adrenaline hype disappears and another emotion takes hold.

Fear.

She is afraid. She always was, she realizes. Not of what she was meant to do, but that she would be discovered.

Now it’s here. She has dared a check and received a checkmate in return. His deep voice echoes in her head.

_‘I always had my suspicions.’_

_‘The beginning.’_

No, she never played at all; she failed to even start.

The taste of iron floods her mouth. She must have bitten her tongue.

She cannot say how long she sits there, huddled between her table and the cupboard hiding the numerous pots and pans she hardly ever uses. When she stands up, she does what anyone in her position would do. They are listening, she knows, all of them. The Party. The Resistance. She does not care. She rings her stepparents. The people who raised her, gave her love, and whom she has abandoned for a cause she never truly believed in.

Three rings, four, then the receiver stirs in her stepmothers chipper voice.

“Andrea Crain, to whom am I speaking?”

Juliana hesitates.

“Mom?”

“Juliana? You never call! How are you?! What have you done for the holidays, we so missed you!”

She closes her eyes. She thought they would be gone. She thought he would have killed them, arrested them. But they are at home, where they should be.

“I am fine, mom,” she exhales, relieved. “I’ve been busy.”

“I know, I know,” the woman says with ease and Juliana cannot help but smile at her perfected accent. “I wanted to call you two weeks ago, but Franz insisted I leave you alone.”

“How is dad?”

“Oh, he is in the garden dear,” she tells her. “Should I call him?”

“No,” Juliana shakes her head as if her mother could see her. “I’ll call you later, I just realized I haven’t called in a while and wanted to check in.”

“Of course, honey. You should come for lunch soon. Bring the boy with you.”

It takes Juliana a second to realize to whom her mother is referring. The boy is Joe. She told her she lives with someone now.

“I will,” she says, seeing no need to explain the situation. “I have to run now, but I will call you later this week, okay?”

“Of course, of course. Goodbye, sweetheart! It was so good of you to call.”

Juliana puts down the receiver, supporting herself on the back of the couch.

They are alive.

They are alive—at least for now.

 

__________________________

 

She takes a quick cold shower and dresses in her uniform. She opens the windows in her bedroom wide, and, as she shudders under the cold air and her hands tremble in frenzy, she makes her bed.

She is livid but it is not because he found out about her, it is not because her life is most likely going to be over in matter of days. She is livid because she let herself fall for him.

_‘I had to know if I could trust you.’_

She sits down on the corner of her bed, placing her head in her hands, her palms cold on her face.

He has never cheated on his wife.

Nothing in his profile suggested he ever would.

He knew she was a spy.

He knew everything and chose her anyway.

_I won’t be able to kill him_ , she realizes.

_I can’t._

_Not now._

_Not ever._

Standing up, she suppresses a sob. She will have to run—run from the Nazis, the Resistance, run from everyone.

It’s her only chance, but she needs to do something first. She is a spy after all.

She goes to her desk. Putting a piece of paper into her typewriter, she writes the banal message she has been forced to memorize for times of crises. It’s an advertisement for an apartment somewhere in Brooklyn. She will post it in the evening issue of the _Stürmer_. George will wait for her on the previously set meeting place the following day.

It’s a cunning way of cover, one that cannot be discerned by anyone but those who know the code. Juliana puts the short notice in a sweetly scented envelope with a two-dollar bill and seals it.

Moving as if she was in a dream she dresses and exits her her apartment, throwing the object into the nearest mailbox.

She scans the street—the people, the cars. She is being watched, of course she is. This is the GNR; there are billions of anonymous bloodshot eyes waiting for you to make a mistake, to step out of line. Yet being watched and being followed are two different things and she thought she knew the multifold tricks of pointed surveillance.

She had always been observant, quick at interpreting what she saw. Last night she would have sworn she would spot them. She knew the formations favored by a shadowing team; she knew the tricks, the weaknesses and the momentary lapses that could give them away.

But as far as she knows, she has no shadow and that cannot be right.

Everyone has a shadow.

 

 

__________________________

 

She arrives to work late. Mallory gives her a questioning look but does not ask for an excuse, not an honest one anyway.

“Too much to drink last night?” he inquires.

“A bit,” she nods. “My apologies. It won’t happen again.”

He smiles sympathetically and moves into the office, shutting the doors behind him.

She hopes he won’t be in trouble when she disappears. She hopes they will let him go back to IG Farben and leave him alone.

When she leaves the Party Headquarters she looks over her shoulder, searching for the men surely following her, but once again, she does not see them. She moves forward, cursing under her breath. She could risk it. She could go to the market and buy the bloody book there. She could go to a church and find a priest who would tell her what she wanted to know after some mild pressure. It could be pointless—some clue that would have been important the day before yesterday but is hardly of any use now.

Juliana nevertheless wants to know. Susan has never sent her anything before. Never has the woman decide to sidetrack George in order to convey something to her.

It might have been a warning, or it might have been something else entirely.

But if she is followed, _he_ will know and there will be no second chance for her.

 

            __________________________

 

She meets George outside the central bus station. They push through the swirl of people and she thinks that perhaps they might lose her invisible guard dogs after all. They exit through one of the terminals, boarding a local bus only to leave it three stops later to switch into an inconspicuous green sedan. If someone followed her, they must have lost them.

“Well?” George asks, starting the motor.

“I need to see Susan.”

“That’s—“

“I have information she needs to hear, from _me_ ,” Juliana presses, her voice ice cold. “It’s an emergency.”

The man stares at her, his ashen hair wet from the outside icy drizzle.

“All right.”

 

__________________________

 

The current hideout is in an underground bar just off of Manhattan. A cheap, ugly, place, with pot-holed wooden tables and gray walls drenched in the smell of cut-rate whiskey.

George points to one of the round tables and tells her to wait, before signaling to the man behind the bar who quickly clears out the space.

Sitting down, Juliana takes off her coat.

Private audience it is then. She remembers the first time she met the woman with the burgundy hair. Juliana thought her elegant back then—in her long, black overcoat and polished nails, someone who might have lost half of her beauty due to the terrible tragedy, but none of her grace. She could not have been more wrong. The woman hissed like a snake and had little patience for what she called Juliana’s ‘childish whims.’ She was hard and stern. Uncompromising. According to George it was this blind dedication that made Susan such a wonderful operative—the true mastermind of most Resistance operations done on the East Coast.

“Juliana,” the woman says in acknowledgment appearing from behind the corner with George and one other man in tow. “Are you going to be of some use, at last?”

“Susan,” Juliana smiles sweetly watching as the unknown man bars the entrance door, and secures it with his body. Turning to face the inside, the man’s shoulders grown tense and Juliana feels herself shift in her seat. _Is he here to protect me or to stop me?_

Her eyes shift to her conversation partners. There is no reason for losing time.

“Hitler’s dead.”

George’s mouth falls agape.

Susan smiles a cat-like smile. “I assume you received this piece of news from John Smith.”

“Yes,” Juliana nods, “and before you tell me it’s all bullshit, hear me out.”

Leaning into her chair the woman lights a cigarette. “Go on, then.”

“He knows who I am,” she says. “He knows I am spy.”

“What?” George’s eyes widen. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Susan sits in her chair, unmoved by the revelation. “Did you tell him?”

“No,” Juliana shakes her head. “Of course not.”

“The electricity was out in your room the whole night two days ago.” George leans forward. “What was going on there?”

“Do you want details?” she snarls, eyebrow raised.

The man clenches his jaw before slowly settling back.

“I slept with him,” she says, more to Susan than George. “He was waiting for me in the morning with a surprise—he told me he knew who I was all along. He had me followed. It was someone too good for me to ever notice. He knows your name George,” she says then, pointedly. “He will also soon know that what else I gave him was all nonsense. Either way, he asked me to contact you, to meet you and tell you Hitler is dead before it goes public in order to lure you out.”

“You knew you were followed and made contact anyway?” Susan whispers, her tone dangerously low.

“What would you do, Susan?” Juliana replies, irritated. She knows what she was supposed to do according to Susan. She was supposed to bite down on the arsenic pill hidden behind her bathroom mirror and vanish, but she won’t die for this.

The woman ignores her, turning to George. “This is Red Code. Start evacuating.”

Before he manages to react, Juliana slams her palm into the table hard enough for the cheap ashtray to stir.

“I am not done yet.”

The woman tilts her head. “Neither am I, darling.” She looks at the man at the door. “Take her.”

“No!” George yelps, jumping to his feet. “Just hear her out, Susan.”

The woman stares at him. A pause, then, a nod. Susan turns to Juliana. “All right, darling. What’s on your mind?”

“What I said is true, Hitler is dead. Heusmann is currently the acting Chancellor. That’s why Smith sent Joe to Berlin.”

“He told you that?”

“He did not deny it.”

“That’s not enough.”

“What’s Psalms 8:2?”

George blinks in confusion. Susan tilts her head, amused, her malformed skin lining on her face.

“In progress.”

“Susan?” George asks in puzzlement.

The woman’s lips form a grotesque smile.

"Susan, what is she talking about?"

“Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies,” Susan quotes from memory, “to silence the foe and the avenger.”

There is a moment of silence.

Juliana’s eyes widen.

“What?” she whispers, as she realizes the line’s meaning. “What have you done to his children?”

“The girl has fallen for that monster, after all,” Susan whispers to George, her tone mischievous.

“What is wrong with Smith’s children? What have you done?”

“All right, Juliana,” the woman says sweetly. “You always thought you were special. The secret weapon of the Resistance—a weapon raised to kill—but you were never more than a last resort. Ever since you were six and dragged some blond, blue-eyed boy home from one of your afterschool activities, I knew you couldn’t be trusted and of course I was right. You would never kill Smith. You are infatuated with him.”

“That’s bullshit,” Juliana yells. “Bullshit.”

The woman laughs. “Of course, Juliana. I would never suspect you to acknowledge this to us, or yourself for that matter and you don’t have to. We found another way, a better way—one that will discredit this whole fucking institution of theirs. His son has some congenital disease affecting muscle. Runs in the family, apparently. John Smith wanted to hide the fact by killing the practitioner. I wanted you to make him confess this; alas you did not understand the code and we managed to obtain a copy of his son’s medical file. We sent it to Headquarters this morning.”

“You bitch,” she cries deranged, the sound breaking in the brick alcoves of the room. “They will euthanize an innocent boy!” _Not another child_ , her mind screams, _not on my watch. I’ve had enough of this. Enough!_

The woman turns to leave, ignorant of Juliana’s mental outburst. She signals to the man, who resumes in carrying out her orders.

“What will happen to her?” George asks, his voice tight.

Susan turns to him. “What do you think? She has become a liability.”

“No,” he cries. “You can’t do that.”

“But she can,” Juliana says to George as she stands, toppling her chair as she retreats from the man closing in on her, garrotte in hand. “You are no better than the Nazis, haven’t you realized that yet?”

“Good,” nods Susan in approval. “Because if we are going to beat them, we have to be worse.”

Juliana glances behind her, looking for an exit but finding only black painted stone. With little other choice she draws him in, lets herself get trapped against the back wall. The nameless man is on her, unfurling his wire and Juliana waits. She knows she doesn’t have the strength, but she is faster and well-trained. As he reaches for the other end of his wire he is distracted for a brief moment and in that moment she springs, charging towards him as she knees him in the groin, leaving him momentarily hunched. She steps towards the door she entered from, eyes finding Susan as she moves towards the counter. _Another gun_ , Juliana thinks a fraction of a second before the man charges her from behind. She ducks, elbowing him in the stomach before swirling swiftly around and punching him in the heart, a downward motion as though her fist was a flat hammer. It forces the breath from his mouth as his arm shoots forward, punching Juliana in her face. There is a cracking sound in her nose. “Shit,” she groans. He reaches for his pistol at his side. She reaches for his nostrils, putting two fingers in and jerking his head upright. They didn’t teach her to fight fair—they taught her to win. The man gives a little cry. She takes his gun. The next thing she knows, the man in dead and her face is covered in splatters of sticky blood.

She looks up, franticly pointing the gun in the direction of the counter, but Susan is not where she was a moment ago. George is there, standing with his back to her, his arms raised in caution as if trying to calm down the woman, standing not far from him.

“Stop this, Susan,” he says calmly. “Let her go. She told us the truth.”

Juliana drags herself upright, blood flowing freely from her crooked nose. She makes no attempt to stop it. There is a gun in Susan’s hand, an old revolver—a remnant of the war, like the woman herself.

“You’ve always had a soft spot for the girl, George,” she hisses. “It clouds your judgment.”

“Susan,” he sighs.

Juliana lines her body behind his, breathing heavily.

“Step away, George,” Susan shrieks. “Or I’ll take you down with her.”

“No, Susan,” he says, his voice high and quivering with tension.

Without warning, there is a shot. Loud and forceful, its echo rings loudly in the soundless room.

The moment Juliana registers its sound, she instinctively presses down the trigger. She sees Susan collapse to the floor. She takes two steps forwards, shooting once more as her hand trembles under the gun’s force. The motion is automatic. It’s something someone taught her once. Something she never had to use until now.

She stands above the woman’s lifeless body, frozen, watching the red liquid spill onto the tile floor. _I did this_ , she thinks. _I killed her_. Her eyes slide to the man behind her, his brain matter splattered on the floor. _I killed them both._

“Juliana?”

The sound of her name muffled.

She feels her heart pump blood in her chest, one beat at a time.

“Juliana!”

She turns, suddenly alert. It feels as if someone tore her out of a dream. No, not a dream. A nightmare.

“George?”

The man supports himself on edge of one of the round tables, his right hand pressed to his stomach as his blood makes its way though the fabric of his dark blue shirt.

“George—,” she starts, moving towards him.

“Listen,” he breaths. “You need to go. Now.”

“But—,” she presses her own hand to his wound with a vain hope she can stop the bleeding. He groans, his body shaking.

“Stop it!” he barks. “I am done for but you need to get out of here before someone comes in and sees this.”

Shivering, Juliana nods in understanding.

_They would kill me_. _They_ will _kill me._

“Listen,” he says, his voice breaking. “No one in the Resistance will know you did this. They will think it was me and I will be dead soon enough. They will protect you. Go to them.”

“Who? Where?”

“The Fortress.”

“What? What Fortress?” Juliana blurts out.

“It’s—,” he stops himself, choking on the blood that suddenly comes from his mouth. “It’s the Resistance Headquarters. It’s in the Neutral Zone, in Mazunte or something, in Mexico.”

“Where?” She asks again, not being able to understand him properly. 

George ignores her question. “Look for Sarah Shalit. She—” he coughs. “She should be in charge. Now go.”

She stares at his ghost-like face, realizing there is no hope for him.

It happened so fast.

“I didn’t know what she was planning, Juliana,” he whispers. “I would never let her hurt you. Not for your mother’s sake.”

“I know,” she tells him, and she does—now. “Thank you. I will never forget you.”

He laughs, or attempts to do so. “I don’t care for some memory,” he says, slowly slumping into a nearby chair. “Give me your gun, and go.”

She hands him the pistol and, kissing his brow, she runs—but not away.

Not yet.

She needs to warn someone first.


	9. Running

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear all, I am so sorry this took so long. I have some good news, however. The story is written now and the last chapter or the epilogue from John's POV is coming soon. Thank you so much for your lovely comments and excitement about the last chapter. It really is an amazing reward to read them!
> 
> To this chapter. The never realized Albert Speer’s Volkshalle could accommodate up to 150.000 and with the celling rising to more than 300 meters it would technically generate its own weather. 
> 
> Mazunte is a real place and so is the New York Public Library, of course. Admittedly I’ve never been to either of those, even though I did some image preparation. I have no idea if there is a coffee shop in there somewhere but for the sake of the story, let’s pretend. The plane “rockets" are then taken from Philip K. Dick’s actual book, which is worth reading but rather disappointing, I must say. The interplay between utopia and reality is following the thought of my fave Albert Camus.

_"I took my power in my hand a_ _nd went against the world."_

Emily Dickinson

 

* * *

 

 

It is cold. Freezing. The sky is grey and heavy with clouds and the promise of snow. Walking in a brisk pace, Juliana rolls the collar of her coat high up in her blood stained face. Her eyes are pinned on the far end of the grim alleyway. She needs to wash off the blood somewhere. She needs to calm down. She needs to come up with a plan.

She finds a subway station. Taking the stairs two at a time, she looks for a bathroom. There is one—a shabby place covered in faded blue tiles and a toothless woman at its door. It is a crude image of poverty, one that the Führer promised to eradicate once and somehow failed without anyone noticing. In places like these, it almost seems as if the loyal citizens of the Reich have forgotten how it all started. But perhaps they never knew in the first place.

“Fifty cents, Missy,” the witch squeaks.

Juliana does not say a word, just throws the money in a jar and moves forward. The woman eyes her curiously but quickly loses interest, whispering to herself in a tongue only she can understand.

Juliana takes the remnant of soap and vigilantly washes her hands. Unfastening her coat, she splashes water on her face, getting rid of the dried blood.

They are all dead—Susan, George, and the nameless man. What has she done? What for?

 _No_ , she thinks. _I_ know _what for._ _They would have killed me_.

She stares at her reflection in the mirror. She is thin, her face bony and dark with blue circles that underline her eyes. She inhales deeply. The smell of the cold winter air mixed with stale urine. Her eyes fall shut.

 _Focus_.

There is a tap with a loose washer somewhere and the sound of the slow drip feels like a reason enough to go mad.

_Focus, Juliana, for fuck’s sake!_

She needs to tell John. She needs to warn him before it’s too late. Before they take that smart boy of his and end his life to match their godforsaken laws. He might not believe her, she knows, and why would he? He knows most of the things she has ever told him were blatant lies.

She could go and find Helen, she thinks, only to dismiss the idea as utterly ridiculous. She cannot simply show up on their doorstep. What would she say?

‘The Resistance knows about your son’s disease and are about to use it to destroy your sweet familial idyll. I know because I am—was—one of them.’ Or, even better, she could tell Helen some intriguing story of how she found out; how her husband had sent Juliana to save them.

Nonsense.

Even if Helen did listen to her, she would never manage to pass the garden gate. The house might be white, middle class, and ordinary, but Juliana knows better than to succumb to such superficial appearances. It’s a guarded fortress with dozens of men with rifles hidden behind the walls of the surrounding buildings—guards who are ready to shoot anyone who arrives unannounced. She might have lost her personal monitors, who followed her around like invisible shadows, but she is not alone. In the Reich, no one ever is.

No. She needs to reach him personally.

He is her best shot. _His_ best shot.

 

__________________________

 

 

After a frantic search, she finds a telephone booth on one of the main streets. She dials the number of his office out of memory, her fingers trembling as they turn the mechanism across the metal numbers. A few weeks ago, she despised herself for inadvertently memorizing it. Now, she is glad she did—as silly as it was at the time.

“What can I do for you, Miss Crain?” asks the melodic voice of Smith’s assistant following her automatic, if startled, introduction. John had given her a number leading directly to his desk to avoid attention. It must have been redirected.

Her blood turns cold.

“I’d like to speak to Obergruppenfüher Smith,” she says, her voice less steady than she would have liked.

“I am afraid Obergruppenfüher Smith is not here, Miss Crain. Would you like to leave a message?”

She looks at her watch and swallows. It’s eleven—on a workday. Something is wrong. Something must be wrong.

“That won’t be necessary. Is he coming back later today?”

“I am afraid not, Miss. The Obergruppenfüher is on a leave.”

Juliana feels her knees tremble.

“Ah! A well deserved one, I am sure,” she says, her voice tensely cheerful. “I shall call back at a later time. Thank you.”

“Very well, Miss Crain,” says the man. “Heil Hitler!”

“Heil,” she replies and hangs up the receiver. Silently, she stares at its apparatus as if it could yield some additional answer. _It can’t be_ , she thinks, _if Susan sent the papers by post, it couldn’t have reached them yet._

Slowly, she dials his home number, hoping she will not come to regret it. After five drawn-out rings, she forces herself to hang up. They are not there. No one is.

For the first time she truly considers the possibility of being too late.

What if they took them already?

What if they took them all?

She could call Mallory. She could meet him and tell him the truth about her, about who she is. He would understand, wouldn’t he? _No!_ A voice cries inside her, its sound clashing with the hammering of her own heart. _It’s too late for that._

Her alert eyes scan the street in a desperate motion. Her palms bathed in sweat. She does not know what to do or where to go. She took precautions, of course, taking all her cash from her house. It will sustain her for a while—a week, maybe more. She could disappear, run without looking back, but she cannot let the child die. Not even if it weakens the Party. Not even if it would help the cause.

 _Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good_ , she recalls bitterly, thinking of the vile Susan woman who now lies dead in that basement bar, Romans 12:21.

She walks out of the telephone booth, her breath steady, her image composed. She’ll try calling them again, in the evening perhaps. The kids might be in school. Helen might be out. John might be—she does not know where John might be. He cannot be on leave; not when the GNR is tumbling down.

Needing a place to sleep, Juliana finds a shabby hostel in the Bronx.

The receptionist, clad in an old-fashioned and a pair of stripped pants, raises his eyes from the TV playing in the background. “A room?” he rasps, as if bothered by the stream of non-existent customers.

She nods. When he sees she wants to pay in cash, he asks for no identification and she does not offer him any. A few minutes later, she makes her way to the New York Public Library. She needs to brush up on her knowledge of geography. She always enjoyed looking at maps when she was a child. Little did she understand back then that it was a desperate form of escapism—a wish to be somewhere else. Now she knows better than to think that changing your location changes your life. Starting anew is nothing but a sheer illusion. Life is always built from the very same materials—the same problems.

She will run. She’ll have to. But in the end, she knows that her escape will make a little difference.

_You can’t run from who you are._

Once inside, she finds a map of South America. Focusing on the place that was previously known as Mexico she tries to recall what exactly she is supposed to find.

 _‘Mazente,’_ George had mumbled.

_Or was it ‘Muzante’?_

She cannot remember.

Opening the index, she looks to places under the letter M, searching for something resembling what her uncle uttered. It takes her only a few seconds to find Mazunte. _That must be it_ , she thinks, noting down the code and returning to the map. Her eyes automatically slide to the eastern coast, from the hook of what used to be Texas to the green forests of Yucatan. But the code tells her otherwise. Mazunte is a beach town on the southern Pacific Coast, near what was once Guatemala.

She stares at the map in disbelief. It makes no sense. The Resistance Headquarters on the Pacific—utterly inaccessible from both Europe and GNR? She would have to return to the Pacific States. Somehow she would have to get a new passport and new visa. Or she would have to face the wilderness of the neutral zone, with its lack of infrastructure and bounty scouts with her name as their prime target. She would have to brave the jungle, getting by with little to no money or knowledge of the local language.

Besides, she thought The Fortress would be hidden somewhere deep in the mountains, away from prying eyes and ears, but on the coast?

She leans into her chair, staring at the far off wall.

 _It can’t be_ , she thinks, _it must be some sort of a code_ , _a further layer of cover._

If it was a real place she could simply go to the harbor, convince some smugglers that she is just a pretty face wanting to escape her tyrannical husband and get herself on a ship. She could pay them well—even if she had to spend all the money she has. The trade would be less than fair. They might take advantage of her being alone and seemingly vulnerable. But this? No one will take her to Mazunte. She would have to go to Tampico first and then across the land somehow as going through the Greater Nazi Reich and then the Neutral Zone is unthinkable. She has to find the Resistance contact in the docks; otherwise she’ll end up somewhere she is not supposed to. How? She does not know.

Getting up from the wooden table she hears her chair creak. Some raise their head in annoyance; others ignore her, their eyes too focused on the print covered pages. Walking into the classical foyer she gets her coat and swiftly moves to the entrance. The hollow sound of her steps echo in the grand hall, clashing only with the muted sound of a transmitter. She stops, looking around. There is no one; no visitors, no students, no guard at the door, only the large tree, towering above her in all of its festive glory. Pricking up her ears she slowly follows the electronic sound. It is someone’s voice, a speech—Juliana realizes. Her pace quickens. The cut of words sound German; they _are_ German.

She enters a small café, one she used to frequent at one time. There might be well over hundred people there, huddled against each other, too focused to take off their winter coats.

“What's happening?” she asks a petite woman in the back of the crowd. The woman turns her head in Juliana’s direction. There is fear in her eyes. Juliana pushes forward.

 _No, she thinks. This can’t be_.

She fights through the crowd to the source of the power-driven noise. Not a transmitter, a television.

The screen shows the spherical inside of the _Volkshalle_ , the largest building in the GDR—the whole world, really. Juliana breathes out in relief. She expected to see the New York Headquarters. She expected it to be the proclamation of a mediocre bureaucrat that the man who has been running the former Unites States has been exposed as a traitor and a hypocrite. She expected a speech that would give birth to a new leader and ruin another.

But there is no unknown man, ready to rise, just burning fires, elongated red flags carrying the Reich’s infamous symbol and thousands upon thousands of people in uniforms standing upright in carefully measured rows. The commentator stops his rasping narration. She clenches her jaw. The _Volkshalle_ is only used for the most sacred of ceremonies. They will announce the Führer is dead, she realizes then. But why? What has happened in the last couple of days that forced them to act without delay?

The camera zooms in on the massive marble doors, as they swing open. Himmler enters the platform, his small eyes narrowed behind the circular rims of his glasses. Raising his right hand the hall responds in tow. The muffled noise of synchronized movement sends shiver down her spine.

“Volksgenossen!” the man cries. “Comrades!” proclaims the voice over shakily with a slight delay. “You have gathered here to hear the terrible news! Today, in the early morning hours, our beloved Führer passed away.”

The hall gasps. The people around her stir, others cry out. She stares at the screen, motionless.

“But his death was not of natural causes! For a short while, we believed this deed to be the treachery of a foreign power. However, we were at fault. We have been betrayed; our Führer has been murdered by men within our midst.”

The man next to her looks around uncomfortably as if he thought the traitors who have killed the Führer were hiding in this very room. Someone in the crowd starts talking. Another person promptly hushes them. Juliana swallows, her throat dry.

“The ringleader of these traitors is Martin Haussmann. He attempted to seize power for himself. But his treason was exposed, by one of the most loyal men, Obergruppenführer John Smith.”

“What,” her lips move in silence. She sees Himmler step down from the podium only to watch John replace him. Her eyes widen in shock.

“The Reich thanks you!”

She feels herself stumble back.

“The Reich salutes you!”

She turns, her feet numb. She needs air. This is the man she is trying to protect? She drags herself through the stunned crowd. A man who is being saluted in the center of the Reich as its true hero? Once in the halls she runs without looking back, slamming her full weight against the heavy wooden door.

What will they do now, once someone reads the letter Susan sent?

Will they ignore it for the sake of consistency?

 _No_ , she thinks, her mind racing. _Hitler is dead and he disclosed his murderer, or so_ they _believe_. She doubts that is the whole truth. What you see on the news is never the whole truth—most of the times it is not truth at all. One thing is certain however. He is a key player now. The next chancellor will have to have his backing or get rid of him—and in the Third Reich it is always easier to get rid of someone than win his or her support.

She storms out of the wooden door. The street is deserted, motionless. She has never seen anything like it. Everyone is in hiding, watching the screens, listening to their _Volksempänger_ , and preparing for the storm that is certain to break out.

There are cars parked in front of the library.

She has never stolen a car before. She has also never killed anyone, but everything happens once for the first time and perhaps today is the day when it happens for her.

She runs down the stairs to size up the nearest vehicle. It’s a small, blue Volkswagen with rusty door, a student car.

 _Forgive me_ , she whispers as she breaks the window and opens the door from the inside. Starting the car is more difficult. She had seen Frank do it a couple of times when he lost his keys but never had a reason to try herself, never thought she would need the experience. Her hands are shaking underneath the wheel; she burns herself twice before she manages to get the care humming.

 _If I die_ , she thinks as she steps on the gas pedal, _at least I die doing something I believe in_.

 

__________________________

 

An old model of Volkswagen turns into a residential area. Its inconspicuous color and slow speed wakes little attention. When passing a small white family house with dark gray roofing it slightly decelerates. The uniformed men standing guard before the house and on the street raise their heads in warning. Their eyes are pinned on the car with weary caution. Others, carrying boxes into a large van, pay the vehicle little attention.

The woman behind the wheel looks straight ahead, passing by as if she was on her way somewhere else entirely.

 

__________________________

 

Juliana sits in the small car. Her foot is pressed down on the pedal; the cold wind coming in through the broken window freezes her face numb. Part of her is grateful for it—the anesthetic the frost seems to supply. She does not know who sent the men to sniff around his house or if they were sent before of after the broadcast. Did someone do it because he truly believe in the racial ideology or because did he simply want to elevate himself as yet another savior of the people from the corruption and hypocrisy.

The boy is dead, or soon will be, she is certain of it and Helen and the girls? They won’t survive him for long. Not if the man who is in charge now is as power hungry as she imagines him to be.

And they always are.

There is only one thing she can do now—she can save _him_.

Parking the car in a parking lot far away from the main entrance, she enters the sterile environment of the airport arrivals hall. _He will have to come home at some point, won’t he?_

It’s a long shot, she knows, but it’s the only one she has. She buys herself a black coffee and settles sideways of the big swing door that spit out the in-flyers coming in on the SST rockets. She always found the word rocket to be an exaggeration—nothing more than a wish for futuristic utopia, and yet, she could not help but be impressed when couple of years ago, Lufthansa introduced a flight pending between New York and Berlin in less than three hours.

In and out, in and out, she observes the door swing with her tired eyes. There is no incoming flight from Berlin within the next hour and she wonders if she could allow herself a short nap. Feeling herself slowly slumping into her chair, she convinces herself to take deep breaths, forcibly strengthening her posture. This is no time for sleep.

Thirty minutes into her monitoring, Juliana watches a large black limousine arrive into front of the entrance. Turning her head slightly to gain a better view, she sees two young able-bodied men dressed in the SS uniform exit the vehicle and start chatting. One of them pulls out a cigarette; the other carefully scans the crowd with his pointed eyes. The scene looks official enough to pose as some sort of a pre-welcoming parade, but the car is too small for the occasion and the two men are too stiff, too watchful to act as the initial greeting committee.

Juliana watches them watch the scene. This is her territory, her craft; blending in with the crowd. She is an unseen predator hidden in the tall, green grass - and they? They are like antelopes on the plane, vigilant but blind. The only problem is, they are more likely to bite. Their presence, however, indicates she is in the right place.

Her blue eyes turn to the flip board, a Lufthansa flight from Berlin is now on the arrivals board, scheduled to land in twenty-seven minutes. She stands up, throwing the cup from her coffee in a near by trash. Her movements are calm, calculated.

This might be the last thing she ever does, or it might be a beginning of some sort, she cannot say.

One way or another, it is time for the final act.

 

__________________________

 

She runs to him across the airport hall, her shoes clicking on the marble floor. Her action is nothing out of the ordinary, nothing suspicious. She is someone welcoming a loved one home—a friend, a lover.

John is discreetly dressed in civilian clothes, his hat pulled deep down into his face. She has never taken him for an attention seeker. She was right. When he finally raises his head in her direction and sees her, a discernible blaze of surprise and irritation flashes through his eyes before they harden. There is nothing he can do now—nothing that could stop her immediate action and not create a public scene.

“Darling!” she proclaims, her voice interwoven with staged excitement, as she throws her arms around his neck. Letting himself be claimed into her embrace, his body freezes in hesitation. When he finally does move, she can feel the barrel of his gun hidden deeply in his long trench coat, pressing against her side. The people around them continue walking, chatting, utterly consumed by their own lives.

Juliana smiles a feeble smile.

“Hear me out, John,” she whispers into his ear. “Please.”

He stirs, pressing her against him—pressing her against his revolver.  

“I am listening.”

She feels herself swallow. She needs to act fast.

“Can you see the men outside?” she asks, knowing very well he can.

His eyes move to scan the outside. Have they seen them yet, Juliana wonders? Are they watching them, calculating their next move? Or are they somehow out of sight because the warm, setting sun reflects itself on the sizable glass walls a bit too strongly.

Slowly, he nods. Their faces only inches apart, he looks down at her and she can feel her own exhaustion mirrored in the lines of his face. He looks older now, somehow, worn out of his youthful charm.

“They are here to arrest you,” she breathes quietly.

“They are here to _welcome_ me.”

“They know about your son’s condition,” Juliana tells him then, knowing they are running out of time. “They know what you did to protect him.”

She feels him shift, his expression altering to a mixture of dread and uncertainty, his eyes ticking from one side of her face to the other.

“How?”

“The Resistance. They found the files.”

His breath visibly quickens and she feels him push the gun deeper into her flesh. Juliana does not move. She knows he has realized what this means; that if what she tells him is true, they are lost to him now.

“Why are you here?” he asks in an uncompromising tone, forcing himself to stroke her cheek with his thumb. The gesture is mechanic, divorced from their conversation, their relationship. It’s a performance for the sake of normality, she knows and yet somehow she wants to believe that he _is_ grateful for her help and that what she has done will not be dismissed as treachery.

She stares at him, her blood pulsing. Why is she here? Everyone has always claimed that their world is realized in form of a struggle—a struggle between utopia and reality. When she was little, she believed them—the Nazis, the Resistance, her parents. Not anymore. This world, _her_ world, has always been a struggle between _different_ utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality. No man or woman can hope to save everything and everyone. Better, after all, never means better for everyone. What she can do, however, is to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.

She wanted to save the boy. She has failed. So she decided she would at least attempt to save the man—the one man, the only man that has ever truly known her, and through him, save herself.

She looks at him now, his sharp yet shattered face lit by the warm light of the setting sun. She could tell him the truth. The selfish, pitiful, truth that without him, her life would lose its purpose, but she can’t—she won’t.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” she says in the end, her voice that of a soldier who has rejected his command and swiftly regained a sense of moral responsibility.

“Why should I trust you? How do I know this is not a trap?”

She can feel his heart beating through the fabric of his coat, he is nervous. No matter how well he can command his face, he cannot command the muscle in his chest.

“If it was a trap, how would I know about your son?”

He stares at her, the wheels turning in his brain.

“They aren’t dead,” he says, his voice unsteady. “They can’t be. They—“

“Perhaps not yet, but there is nothing you can do to save them now,” she tells him resolutely. She would like to punch him, tell him he should pull himself together. Juliana does no such thing; she offers him a choice instead. “You can die beside them, or come with me and try to make those bastards pay.”

His eyes return to the men outside, and she feels him hesitate. She has given him all she has; now it’s up to him, but there is no time for thinking, not anymore. “John,” she whispers, quietly, urgently.

His attention snaps back to her. The pressure exerted onto her side disappears and she feels herself sigh in relief.

 

“You shouldn’t have come,” he tells her, his voice low but firm.

“Then you shouldn’t have let me go.”


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The day has come and the end is here - at least for now. I have some scenic ideas how this might go on, thus there might be a stand alone chapter focusing on their relationship BUT no promises. The following epilogue mirrors the prologue, meaning it’s from John’s POV, something many of you said were looking forward to! 
> 
> With this said, I want to briefly acknowledge the incredible Ana_Khouri. She suffered through my terrible grammar, my appealing sentence structure, my plentiful plot inconsistencies and my months-long absence, all while she corrected everything, even retrospectively and advised me by making wonderful suggestions. She also listened to my rants about OOC and narrative time, becuase I really tried to squeeze a lot in a very few weeks. SO. Here is to you, Ana_Khouri! I am so glad you contacted me back then and offered to be my beta, as this story would not have progressed the way it did without you! Thank you! 
> 
> I started this story of a whim, trying to get season two out of my system and I was and still am surprised and so incredibly excited about all the amazing feedback I got. I loved that those of you who do not ship the ship decided to dive into this story and got invested - and perhaps even started to like the two together! (That’s really the best thing I could have asked for!) I was so excited every time you guys said my characterization was on point, or that my cliffhangers were creating the desired suspense, or that you wished the show would take a similar turn or when you enjoyed some weird-ass historical reference. I loved ALL your comments, they’ve made this story so so worth it for me, so thank you my dearest readers and commenters for every single word you have written to me. Thank you for your patience and for your support. You have been wonderful and I can't wait what you say after reading this (last) piece of the puzzle.

_“We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.”_  

― Albert Camus

 

* * *

 

 

He feels the ground move in a slow, tender motion—one that has the power to lull one to sleep—but the metal container they gave them to share creaks as if in pain with the ship’s every move, the floor itself icy and wet.

He stares at the cold, wrinkled wall with hazy eyes. There is an indent in that wall somewhere—round and small and next to it, there is another, and another. They weren’t there when he came in here; when he shut the metal door without a second glance and hit the wall until the blood dripping from his knuckles blended with the reddishly eroded paint. A sense of terrible loss rolled in from the night, filling his heart, and he screamed. He screamed wordless, frantic cries of despair swallowed by the powerful sound of the whirring engines.

Hours later, he is silent and the hot tears he shed have turned to ice. He has deserted them. Helen, Thomas and his little girls—he has deserted them all.   
  
  
  


That young woman, the one he thought he knew more than, she told him they could not be saved and he was too shaken and shocked to think or to argue. How could they know about Thomas? How could _she_?

He had seen the men outside. He wanted to believe they were there to escort him, to welcome him. He couldn’t. The car was too plain, the men too watchful and ordinary, and then there was _her_ , risking her life to warn him, _him_ of all people.

He knows very well they would have executed him—made an example of him. _They_ —the men who crave his power and success. Ruthless men, who never waver, never look back. Men like the spineless Gruppenführer Schaffner or the ever-proper bureaucrat Steven Cole, who would burn the city he has done his best to save without a second thought. ‘There is nothing you can do,’ Juliana Crain muttered into the collar of his shirt and he let himself be led away. At the time, he saw no other way.

But there was another way. There always is.

 _Death_.

He could have stayed and died. He could have died with them, _for_ them. He could have stayed where he was and showed them that he loved them, that everything he has done was to protect them. Perhaps, he would have even found a way to rescue them. As unlikely as that would be he has robbed them of their last chance. He has condemned them to die alone, choosing to revenge them instead of joining them.

A coward’s choice.  
  
  
  


He rises in an abrupt motion, trying to distance himself from the beast that lurks within him. But the creature is trapped and so is he. He starts to pace back and forth, the sharp sound of his footsteps echoing inside the hollow, metallic walls.

He let them die out of fear of his own death he stared at with animal terror in that swarming airport hall.

His bloodstained hands form into tight fists and he rages at the door, opening it before storming out of his self-made prison, his lungs suddenly desperate for air.

The night sky is dark, cloudless. By a slight shimmer of moonlight he can see the slow waves the water make under pressure from the ocean’s powerful tide. Drawing in a sharp breath he listens to the rhythm of its slow, heavy progression and observes the way it gathers the night's darkness and runs black away from the boat.

He is powerless, he realizes as he tries to analyze the swirl of emotions he is failing to suppress. For the first time in a very long time, he has no power at all.

He _has_ _to_ follow her.

Juliana Crain.

The void around him reminds him of that empty lecture hall at NYU where he first saw her. She seemed so proper to him then, in her high heels and her brand new uniform. But she was also enticing and odd, with eyes that knew more than she let on and a cat-like smile that haunted men’s dreams. The recollection seems ancient to him now—blurred and tainted with later impressions. It is like a dream, a vision, not a memory.

Was it because of that lure that he himself succumb to that the sailors she approached in the harbor trusted her when she asked them for a passage to some obscure Mexican town? Was it her magnetism that caused them to let him on the boat with her practically without question, searching him only so convincingly that he can still feel the cold metal of his gun pressed against his back?

They engaged in little conversation after she let go of his hand in front of the airport hall and pushed him into a small, freezing car. She told him they were going to the harbor. She said they would go to the Neutral Zone. He was too paralyzed with grief for his family and fear for his own life to care, so he nodded absently and pushed himself deeper into his seat in order to conceal his identity from curious on watchers. He thought she had organized a transfer prior to their escape. He thought she had a plan, but when they arrived at the harbor she looked lost—as if she did not know whom to approach or where she wanted them to go. In the end she found a boat and said something that satisfied the men on board before they took them on board and took her out of his earshot. She introduced him as a ‘valuable man to the cause’ but he was not granted the privilege of their conversation.

This wild escape of theirs, it looked so hectic yet so easy.

It looked _too_ easy.

Unless it was all a sham—some elaborate plot he did not manage to uncover. Was she playing him just like he had been playing her? Did she know he knew who she was all along? Was he the fool?

Moving towards the ship’s side he leans his weight into its railing and takes out a somewhat damp cigarette. He sees his hands tremble more than he feels them doing so.   


__  
  
Could this be?

_Nonsense._

He is being delusional. He hasn’t slept in three days—too busy saving the world from nuclear war. How fantastic that sounds and how entirely pathetic, considering the day’s events.

The cigarette hisses as he inhales the smoke.

He shakes his head, but his mind starts to race in feverish rage, calculating what he could not calculate before. _The timing_ , he wonders, _it all happened at once, why?_ What if she truly works for one of his opponents? What if—what if she was supposed to make him disappear? Why? He does not know and part of him does not care. He can’t trust her. He knew that and yet, somehow, he wavered and followed her when he perhaps shouldn’t have.

He is on the move then. The drive spurs adrenaline into his blood only to be tamed by a professional composure. It is a soldier’s instinct, the cool of an experienced fighter. He needs to find her. She had given him space after their boarding. He paid it little attention—thought it was out of consideration but now? He has humiliated her, threatened her and she went and risked her own life for his when she could be rid of him and every trace of their little engagement. When she could have fulfilled what she was trained for. There has to be a reason.

He weaves his way through the dim alleys in-between the dark towers of transport caskets. His watch shows thirty minutes past midnight. The ship is silent. The crew is mostly asleep, locked inside their cabins. Only the motors brim distantly at its rear.

He wonders if she is hiding somewhere. If she is looking for him the way he is looking for her—with a gun in her hand.

She isn’t.

He finds her standing at the fore, huddled in her dark coat, her attention fully dedicated to the ink-like ocean. She appears serene to him, standing there lost in her thoughts as her carelessly bound hair flows in the wind. The image reminds him of the Romantic painters—of Friedrich and Turner.

Something in him cajoles with disgust. He hates this. Hates himself.

He wants to believe that what she did she did out of some sense of superior morality. The same sense that made him go against his orders couple of days prior. He can’t. It is too big of a risk.

He places his index finger on the trigger. His touch is light.

_You can’t trust her. You can trust no one._

He knows she must hear him now—sense him. But she does not turn or stir.

It irritates him.

He hesitates.

“What are you waiting for?”

The sound of her voice catches him of guard. He halts.

She turns to face him, her pale complexion amplified by the silver light of the moon. She looks almost like a ghost, he thinks, a white silhouette of the women who once liked to flirt with death.

“Shoot me, John,” she says daringly as she takes a step forward, her eyes blazing with uncanny intensity. “Do it!”

When he doesn’t move, she laughs, the sound spiteful.

His palm starts to sweat; the gun in his hand grows heavy. He stares at her, puzzled. What was he expecting? Did he want her to beg for her life? Why didn’t he shoot?

“You think this is some sort of a ploy, don’t you?” she shakes her head in disbelief. “I wish it was, John, because for the first time in my life, it isn’t and I don’t know what to do.”

He sees her stir with emotion.

“I had one job. One order. I was supposed to kill you,” she snarls. “Yet here we are.”

She studies his gun then a corner of her mouth turns upward as if she was amused by the absurdity of the whole situation.

“I don’t have a plan, John. I wasn’t even certain _Mazunte_ was a code rather than a destination. It’s a miracle they let us board this ship. I think I know where we are going but I might be wrong, so shoot me if you want. Take your anger out on me because I am not sure that someone else won’t once we land.”

Taking another step towards him, she presses her forehead against the gun’s barrel. He takes a step back. It’s an instinct. She is too close, both to him and to the gun. He could accidentally press the trigger and—

“Kill me now!” she cries, helplessly, between heavy breaths. “Relieve me from this half-life I’ve been living or put the damn thing down, but don’t hesitate. I did and look what happened.”

He stares at her, his gun still pressed against her forehead and he believes her, because she looks broken, miserable, and lost and because she is taking too much of a risk. Perhaps a small part of her truly does not care if he pulls the trigger and only honest people can be at peace with death.

 _Why didn’t she leave?_ He wonders silently, as he looks into her burning eyes. He did not know if she would do what he asked her to do. He hoped she would at the time, it would make things in the GNR easier to handle, but overall he had little use for her then. He had told her the truth. He needed her to charm Joe—nothing more, nothing less.

But he was weak.

He watched that bloody film with her.

He slept with her.

Why?

 _Because you wanted to_ , _you_ _idiot._

He knew her attraction to him was something she couldn’t control and he enjoyed watching her scuffle with herself. He enjoyed making her vulnerable without using threats or pointing guns. He enjoyed watching as she tried to despise him, to hate him, and lean into him at the same time.

It was infatuation, a mindless desire he decided to indulge in, but it was also perilous and carless and he knew that sooner or later she would have to disappear.

She was a vulnerability he couldn’t afford.

But he couldn’t kill her then as he cannot kill her now and so he let her go. He had called of his surveillance men and hoped she would just vanish into thin air never to come back.

He lowers the gun. His eyes still fixed on hers.

She did come back, and whether he likes it or not, she came back for him.

He watches as she lets out a sigh of relief. _Scared after all_ , he thinks as he smiles a cold smile. He looks down at the gun, plain and simple. He had it for years. It was part of his uniform—a uniform he will no longer wear. Walking towards the railing, he throws it overboard with one swift movement. The black ocean consumes it without questions, the only reaction being the sound of its metal hitting the permeable surface.

Juliana watches him in silence. Then she moves to his side, their elbows almost touching.

   
  


“You just threw away our only chance for defence,” she breathes, her voice quiet but clearly reproachful.

“No,” he says his eyes scanning the never-ending body of water. “I threw away the chance to change my mind.”


End file.
